


All's Fair (In Love & Werewolves)

by Whisky (whiskyrunner)



Series: Pavlov's Bell [3]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-07
Updated: 2012-04-07
Packaged: 2017-11-03 05:38:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/377893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskyrunner/pseuds/Whisky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur is lucky to have Eames. Somebody just as different, someone who understands when he wakes up in the middle of the night feeling like he's all alone in the universe. Eames makes that feeling go away.</p>
<p>Eames, however, is not alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All's Fair (In Love & Werewolves)

There are some things Arthur has learned about canines since dating Eames that he could happily have gone the rest of his life without knowing. Like how large their penises are when their knot glands are fully swollen. Or that their semen is a hotter temperature than humans'.

He picks up these interesting tidbits without meaning to, without wanting to; but the one thing he really wants to know, Eames denies him.

"You can't," he says bluntly, when Arthur asks him.

"Why not?"

Eames' wolfishness tells in only a few marked ways during most of the month. In the few days leading up to the full moon, however, he starts to change. His moods grow darker, his temper frayed; even his scent changes, sharp as ozone like the air before a thunderstorm. He's more sexual, rougher when he fucks and leaving marks on Arthur's throat like a badge of ownership.

Then he leaves.

And he doesn't come back until he's returned to normal.

Arthur doesn't see this as very fair.

"You see me as I am all the time," he argues. "Stupid tail and all. Maybe I want to see all of you, too."

"Maybe you don't know what you're asking for," Eames says darkly.

Arthur touches his face, stubble scratching under the pads of his fingertips. "Maybe you're afraid I won't like you if I know what you really look like."

Eames just looks at him, his expression unreadable.

"I'm not going to let you see me change, Arthur," he says, his tone flat.

Arthur looks at illustrations in textbooks. They're old, though, and drawings are never as good as the real thing. He knows enough that he could identify a werewolf if he ran into one on a full moon -- the powerful neck and jaw muscles, the mane in males, the serrated second canine sticking out past the lower lip, the broad, catlike gripping paws -- but he's never seen Eames. His own boyfriend ( _mate_ , his brain supplies).

This strikes him as wrong.

"I would see you as prey," Eames snaps, when Arthur pushes it. "Or worse."

"What's worse than a werewolf seeing you as its lunch?" Arthur asks.

Eames doesn't say anything.

 

+

They take a break between jobs and hole up in Eames' flat in Mombasa.

They spent the last month apart, working different jobs on different continents. It's not fair and Arthur knows it. He's new at this relationship deal, not yet used to being somebody's boyfriend; but Eames has been pining after him for years. And Eames is not by any stretch of the imagination a weak man, but he does have a weakness in Arthur. He's bound by his heart to Arthur, and any moment not spent touching him is a moment wasted. When Arthur leaves, it's nothing but a reminder to Eames that he can't yet match Eames' feelings, that he's capable of being separated from Eames and not pining, that he could at any moment cut his losses and leave for good without any emotional repercussion. Arthur assures him that won't happen, and Eames never asks him to stay, sometimes even takes jobs independently, but Arthur can see the barely-masked hurt in his face.

It's just overwhelming, that's all. Arthur's never let anybody get so close to him, and everyone who's tried has only let him down (Cobb, namely). So sometimes he needs space. And Eames doesn't ask him to stay, but when Arthur returns, his delight is boundless.

The days are hot and sticky, and most of the time, Arthur and Eames are equally so. Arthur wonders if he'll ever get enough of this, lying naked with somebody who sees him and not only loves him but positively worships him. Arthur does a few freelance research jobs from home, but Eames often goes out during the day, meeting acquaintances, gambling and God-knows-what else. He always comes home to Arthur, though, laying around the house with a laptop, in his underwear because it's too hot for much else. And Eames always sweeps him up and takes him to bed.

Eames is the one who gets word of a job not far from them, in Cape Town. It's an extraction job in need of a point. He shows the email to Arthur.

"Impressive pay-off," Arthur says, noncommittal.

"I think you should go," says Eames.

Arthur shakes his head. Eames looks at him in surprise.

"They want you, Arthur," he says. "They requested you."

"Well, they can't have me," says Arthur. His tail is bristling under his leg, and it rankles him to realize that it's common knowledge now that he and Eames have shacked up, or at least are close enough that this team knew an email to Eames would reach Arthur. "Whoever takes point has to be the subject for the first layer, and I can't do it."

"Why not?" Eames asks, baffled. "I've seen you do it a dozen times. And I'll be gone for half the time anyway for that job in Auckland, so it's not like you'll have much to do."

Arthur grits his teeth. "I can't do it because I'll be in heat that week," he says.

"Oh," says Eames. Then his eyes widen. "Oh."

He cancels the Auckland job.

 

+

The heat rolls over Arthur like a hurricane.

It happens to him roughly four times a year, once each season. And it hasn't happened since that time with Eames in the middle of a job. That time, Eames had caught him at the approaching tail end of the heat cycle, and he'd rallied enough willpower to leave after one mating, out of respect for Arthur. This time he'll be around for the whole thing, right at the peak of Arthur's need.

That's how they end up in bed for fourteen solid hours. Arthur's knees ache where they're sunk into the mattress. He exhausts himself every time his body finds some reserve of energy enough for another orgasm, and he falls, panting for breath, pushing Eames away angrily. Then, ten minutes later, the fever hits him again, and his nerves itch and he aches to be touched, and his tail thrashes and he wants to _howl_ and then Eames is there again, a reassuring bulk at Arthur's back, sliding in again to quench the wildfire burn.

Arthur hates this. He hates not being in control of his own body. He hates being driven to Eames after every single mating, even though his body aches and cries for no more. He hates that the only way to satisfy this is to let himself be fucked like a whore, each orgasm wrung out of him brutally just when he thinks he can't possibly muster up the strength for one more. He hates how the scent of Eames drives him crazy, turns him slutty for his cock, spreading his knees and curving his tail out of the way. He hates the oscillating fan in the corner and how it does nothing to cool him off. He hates Kenya for being so hot. He hates everything.

Eames soothes him between matings, kisses and strokes him and tells him it'll be over soon. Then the fever returns, and he's even less capable of coherency than Arthur is.

It shouldn't be possible for anyone to come as much as Eames does that day. Arthur reminds himself that werewolves are built for this, to scent when their mate is receptive and mount them over and over until impregnation happens (or, apparently, one dies of exhaustion). But Arthur's not a werewolf -- he's not strong like a werewolf, loath though he is to admit it -- and though he's had Eames fuck him five or six times in a row before, they've never done anything like this. It doesn't stop. _Eames_ can't stop. Half the time he pulls out before he can tie with Arthur when he comes, just so that he can plunge straight back into him again. There's something frantic and animal in the way he mounts Arthur, and even Arthur knows that his human side isn't all there right now.

Another time, it might be a turn-on. Now, he's sore and tired and he wants to stop. His body can't take anymore.

"Eames," he manages to croak, his face buried in a pillow, rationality trying to claw its way through the fever-haze.

Eames growls softly, his teeth grazing the back of Arthur's neck, his nails leaving scratches around Arthur's waist and belly. He ruts like it's the only thing he knows how to do.

" _Eames_ ," Arthur tries again, voice cracking with exhaustion. "Stop."

Eames buries his nose in the nape of Arthur's neck. He's molded himself to the shape of Arthur's back, and their sweaty skin sticks together with every thrust. Arthur's so full of come he feels _disgusting_ , it's leaking down the inside of his thighs even as Eames works inside him now, and he hates the wet sound of Eames screwing into him. It's on his back from when Eames has pulled out, on his cock and stomach, on the sheets around them. He needs a shower desperately.

" _Stop_ ," he repeats, trying to move away.

Eames snarls and tightens his grip around Arthur's waist, teeth scraping the back of his neck in warning. Then he starts to slow down, gradually. He rocks his hips uncertainly two or three times, little shallow thrusts.

"Stop, Eames," Arthur says again, and this time Eames does stop.

For a minute their harsh breathing and the rotating fan are the only sounds to be heard. Then, slowly, Eames peels himself off of Arthur's back and pulls out. He jerks himself off quickly, with a hoarse moan, and Arthur feels a few more hot spurts land on his back to add to the mess of sweat and come already there. Finally, Eames collapses at Arthur's side. Arthur lands on his belly, gasping.

"Sorry," Eames says, his voice little more than a hoarse rasp. Arthur focuses on catching his breath.

"Drink some more water," he says after a minute.

Eames gropes in the vicinity of the bedside table and finds one of the water bottles he hasn't already emptied. He downs half of it in a few swift gulps, then presses it into Arthur's hand, wiping his mouth off briskly with the back of his hand. Arthur drains the rest of the bottle while Eames fetches another one for himself.

"I need to shower," Arthur says.

Eames whines. "No."

"Yes." Arthur gets out of bed shakily. His legs almost buckle under him. He reaches for the wall to support himself.

"I'll come with you," says Eames, even though he looks like he can barely move, let alone follow Arthur to the shower.

" _No_ , Eames," Arthur says sharply. The fever's finally starting to leave him, and if he can refuse, he will.

Eames stares at him plaintively, repeatedly bunching up fistfuls of the covers in his hands and then unclenching them. His eyes are wild.

"Stay," Arthur orders firmly. He slips out of the room and heads to the bathroom naked, his tail hanging limply.

The first spray of lukewarm water between his shoulderblades feels amazing. He groans, relaxing, and letting the water wash away all the sweat and bodily fluids of the past fourteen hours. He only now realizes how hungry he is. When he's stood in the shower for fifteen minutes and scrubbed away all the filth, he slips out and pads over to the kitchen to grab an apple.

Eames meets him on his way back to the room. Impossibly, he's still hard. The thick jut of his cock between his legs is obscene. It shouldn't be legal to be -- well, _Eames_.

"Go take a shower," Arthur says, when Eames reaches for him. "A cold one. I'm going to throw those sheets in the washing machine. Or burn them. I haven't taken a good look yet."

"I can't help it, Arthur," Eames says brokenly. "I just have to be touching you. Every time I smell you--"

"Everything in this flat smells like me," says Arthur. "Go shower, and then take a long walk. A _long_ one. It'll take me a week to recover from this, I swear."

Eames is plainly conflicted before he forces himself to turn and trudge into the bathroom. Arthur hears the shower start up. With a sigh, he heads into the bedroom and finds a clean pair of boxers, one with a little slit cut under the elastic waistband, so that his tail can hang out. Eames had presented a number of these boxers to him proudly, obviously having taken a pair of scissors to them. Arthur found the boxers comfortable and the gesture touching, however simplistic in design it may be.

With his nudity taken care of, he takes stock of the damage done to the sheets and finds that they're salvageable. He strips them all off the bed, pillowcases included, and carries the bundle to their washing machine, where he loads it up with bleach that prickles his sensitive nose but will hopefully mask any remnants of his heat-scent from Eames.

He spends some time pawing through the kitchen cupboards, looking for crackers or anything that might sate Eames' appetite when he cools off and remembers that he's starving. He stays out of the bedroom until he's heard the shower stop running and the bedroom door shut. A minute later Eames emerges, fully clothed. He leaves quickly.

Arthur considers the fact that he now has a partner who can suffer through the heat with him -- and, evidently, cure it in one brutal sexathon. It's the shortest heat cycle of Arthur's life. Eames has literally fucked it out of him. And it was exhausting and painful and Arthur seriously will need recovery time, but this might just be worth it.

He's settling gingerly on their couch when Eames bursts back into the flat.

"Arthur?" he shouts.

"Right here," Arthur says, getting up quickly. His tail lashes when Eames appears, agitation rolling off him. "What is it?"

"We're made. Get dressed and grab your bag."

Arthur obeys at once. He drops everything and hastens to the bedroom, where he throws on the closest clothing at hand -- loose jeans and a t-shirt of Eames' -- and grabs both their go-bags, designed for situations just such as this, from under the bed. He returns to find Eames watching the door, hands wrapped defensively around a gun.

Arthur tosses him his bag when he looks round. Eames snatches it deftly out of the air and they're gone.

Arthur doesn't ask. Slowing down to ask questions gets people shot. He just follows Eames, trusting him, not knowing what he saw that tipped him off or who he suspects of tailing them. Surely it's some past mark out for revenge, or one of the clients they've let down, or even -- he bristles -- some of Cobol's goons. He knew it was a mistake to stay here, in Mombasa of all places--

They leave the building swiftly and that's when it hits Arthur, something like and yet unlike anything he's ever smelled. Something wild and unique, except to the creature pacing beside him. It's--

Werewolf-scent. Right outside their home.

"I have a place in Toronto," says Arthur.

 

+

There are a few people Arthur would like to meet in his lifetime.

His mother. His birth mother, that is; not his _real_ mother, the one who'd adopted him, that strong-willed single woman who'd been waiting and waiting and finally been contacted by the hospital and adoption agency and asked if she wanted _this_ baby, this freak, and all the media attention and social stigmas and difficulties that would come with him; and she'd cut them off -- rolling her eyes, she said -- and told them, "Would you just give me my son already?"

No, he wants to meet that woman who gave birth to him. He wants to know about his father. Did they know each other, his biological parents? Did he advise her against going to the hospital to give birth? Did he help her do it, wrap Arthur up in a bloodstained towel, all of three hours old, and leave him outside a hospital in the dead of winter? Or was she alone -- did she even know she was pregnant? Because maybe, Arthur wonders, deep down, maybe his father had not found it so easy to harness his feral side, as Arthur did, and maybe he'd hit a heat cycle and needed just to rut, whether his partner was willing or not. When Arthur thinks of this, knowing how easily that wild felid nature can tip into violence, he feels for his mother. He wants to tell her he doesn't blame her.

And then he wants to cut one of her ears off, and ask her how she likes it.

More than his birth mother, Arthur wants to meet his father. Or -- anyone. Anyone who is like him, part feline. He desperately wants that. He wants to know how they do it, how they cope, how they ever form relationships, shunned and secluded by society. He knows in his bones he can't be the last one; but, equally strongly, he feels in his gut an aching loneliness that tells him that even if there are others, he could go his whole life searching and never find one.

In that regard, he's lucky to have Eames. Somebody just as different, someone who understands when he wakes up in the middle of the night feeling like he's all alone in the universe. Eames makes that feeling go away.

Eames, however, is _not_ alone.

Arthur wants to meet _all_ of him -- but also, Arthur wants to meet other werewolves. He wants to meet Eames' family. He wants to know if they're all like Eames, he wants to know about their culture. He's a point man, and this isn't something he can just Google. He wants to meet a werewolf.

He smells one outside their building, and he runs. He doesn't know why he runs. He just does. Eames takes the lead.

 

+

They're on the plane when the heat washes over Arthur once more.

There's nothing he can do about it. The one small mercy is that it was a last-minute flight and they're in separate rows, because he doesn't think they could handle it if they were sitting together. The scent of every passenger batters his nose. Every tiny motion jumps to the forefront of his vision. He clamps his eyes shut and slumps in his seat, sweating it out. It's the longest and most uncomfortable flight of his life.

He expects Eames to pounce him as soon as they get off the plane. Eames' protective instincts, however, are still roused, and the instinct to protect his mate apparently supercedes the instinct to mate.

Just barely.

He hauls Arthur to a cab and tells the driver to hurry.

"Are you alright?" he asks Arthur.

"Yeah, yeah," Arthur says, hunched over with his head in his hands, because absolutely everything is an assault on his senses and his head is splitting. His tail prickles in his pant leg and even though his ass _aches_ , he needs to feel Eames filling that space inside him right now. "I just need--"

"I know," says Eames quietly. His frayed tone tells Arthur just how badly he's suffering too. "We'll be there soon."

Arthur's place is in one of the older neighbourhoods of Toronto, just adjacent to the downtown core. It's an old brownstone, and one of his preferred hideouts. Once they get inside Eames locks the door and hurries off to make sure the whole house is secure while Arthur heads straight to the bedroom, sheds all his clothes and drops onto the bed, rolling and arching to try and relieve the unbearable itch. He strokes himself with one hand, and it's such a relief to finally be able to touch himself, to let his tail thump the bed and lash wildly.

"You're a sight," Eames growls from somewhere near the doorway.

Arthur arches his back off the bed without opening his eyes, gasping raggedly. "Eames."

"Arthur." Eames sounds almost as pained as him. "Someone nearly got the jump on us because I was too distracted by you to be paying attention."

"We got away, Eames, no one knows we're here. Eames, I _need_ you to fuck me," Arthur begs, starting to panic that he might not.

Eames curses softly. Arthur hears him enter the room, and then the rustle of clothing being cast aside. He rolls onto his stomach, stretching himself out with his knees under him, and almost at once Eames is on him with a growl, yanking his tail out of the way and shoving all the way in like he never left. Arthur gives a harsh sob at the immediate pain, and Eames falters.

"Don't you dare stop," Arthur grits out.

Eames ties with him three times before Arthur is finally able to sleep. He feels like he's been turned inside-out, his insides scraped raw. He drifts off to the image of Eames, watching protectively over him.

 

+

One time, he managed to trick Eames. Only the once.

He didn't think about it at first. They were supposed to be extracting a secret their young mark had learned on a Halloween two years ago. Arthur's job was to recreate the night and Eames' to forge his best friend, a stout nine-year-old in a Scream mask.

Halloween. A full moon was part and parcel, wasn't it?

He didn't think it would have an effect on Eames. Not until he was distracted from his building by a low wail, and turned to find Eames no longer disguised but himself, on his knees, arms folded over his face as if the light of the moon was scalding him.

"Kick me out, Arthur," he begged.

Arthur didn't. He knew full well what he was doing when he knelt down and said comfortingly, "It's okay, Eames, you'll be okay."

"No," Eames cried, flinching from his touch, scrunching away from the moon. He was quaking. "Shoot me out, Arthur, please."

"It's just a dream," Arthur told him repeatedly, trying to calm him, remind him that there were no repercussions here. Eames shuddered and peered up at him, as if coming back to himself.

"Arthur," he said softly, reaching out to cup Arthur's face in his hands. His eyes flashed green-gold in the dim light, just for an instant.

Then he snapped Arthur's neck.

Arthur made sure it was a quarter moon when they went down with the mark. But he wouldn't forget that reflective flicker in Eames' eyes, a reminder that there's something animal in Eames, just as there is in Arthur. Not that it's that easy to forget.

 

+

It does take Arthur a week to recover. He leaves his basement bedroom only to lounge in the sunlight flooding in through the bay window in the front room, stretching himself out on the couch in a way that makes Eames eye him hungrily. He has a bookshelf here, and wiles away the time reading. He lets his tail out and it drapes over the edge of the couch, the very tip of it lazily curling and uncurling over and over. When Eames sits on the floor with his back against the couch to watch TV, Arthur's tail slides around his neck of its own volition, distracting Arthur from his book when it makes Eames laugh. He snatches his tail away in embarrassment, but Eames catches it and strokes it. Arthur deigns to allow this, because he hates admitting that it feels good.

Times like this are when Arthur thinks he could be happy never leaving Eames at all, when he could almost admit that his space now includes Eames and that's that. It helps that Eames doesn't infringe unduly, isn't constantly in Arthur's face. He's happy enough to take long walks around the neighbourhood, venture into the downtown core now and then. (He says he's familiarizing himself with the city, but Arthur happens to know Eames has been to Toronto many times before, and is pretty sure he's patrolling.)

When he feels up for it, Eames takes him to bed eagerly. The first push in is a burn, stretching him, but it always is. Arthur grits his teeth and bears it, and soon the rough slide of Eames' cock has turned into the delicious friction Arthur loves, playing his nerve endings like an instrument and waking a symphony inside him. He braces himself against the headboard and shoves back into Eames as hard as he can, tail lashing whenever Eames lets it go.

"You feel so fucking good," Eames growls out, muffled against Arthur's spine. "So fucking hot for me." Every thrust rattles all the bones in Arthur's body. "You want me to come inside you, little kitten? Stop you up with my cock and leave you full of my come?"

"Yes, yes, please," Arthur babbles breathlessly, spreading his knees apart as wide as he can. "Fuck, Eames, do it."

He's always unspeakably desperate for it and when it actually happens, when Eames suddenly crushes himself inside Arthur as deep as he possibly can and holds him down, the base of his cock swelling in Arthur's hole, Arthur always forgets why. He always has the same jolt of panic that he's sure Eames can smell, the fear that Eames won't stop before he tears Arthur open. It's always just at the very limits of Arthur's capacity that it stops, and then he's coming, seated deep, deep inside Arthur, burning and wet, and all the breath is squeezed out of Arthur's lungs from the fullness of Eames inside him. When he comes, he _cries_ at his muscles trying and failing to clench down around Eames' cock.

Then his body begins to adjust. He remembers how to pull air into his lungs. Eames licks and kisses him, and they slowly come back down to earth, and there's something immensely comforting about being tied with Eames that makes Arthur feel wanted and whole.

Very gently, Eames pulls him down onto his side, pressed against Arthur's back. He buries his nose in Arthur's hair and takes deep, slow breaths. They could be tied for anywhere from three to thirty minutes, and it wouldn't be the first time they've fallen asleep like this. But with Eames' scent all over him, Arthur suddenly has another thought.

"Did you know him?" he asks sleepily. "The werewolf, in Mombasa? Did you recognize the scent?"

Eames' breaths continue to come as slow, steady warm puffs of air against the back of Arthur's neck, and Arthur is just starting to wonder if he's already asleep when Eames answers:

"There were two I smelled. They were from my pack."

"You have a pack?" Because he's wondered, before. All werewolves are supposed to have packs. Eames shifts.

"Mine cast me out when I left to join the military."

"Oh," says Arthur.

"They make checks on me every few years."

"Why did we run from them, then?" Arthur asks, tired enough to forget the agitation that had struck him when he smelled the werewolf scent. "If they were from your pack."

"Because I don't know what they want," Eames murmurs, but his arms tighten enough around Arthur's middle to reveal this as half a lie. "And that frightens me."

Sated and sleepy, with Eames a comforting weight all around him, it somehow fails to frighten Arthur.

 

+

Arthur knows something's wrong as soon as he wakes up.

Eames is gone. The clock flashes 4:27 at him. Arthur slips noiselessly out of bed and pulls some clothes on, reaching into the decorative vase on the nightstand and pulling out a handgun.

He hears a floorboard creak above him. Warily, he starts to make his way out of the bedroom and up the stairs.

The house is pitch dark, but for any person with a tapetum lucidum there's more than enough light to see by. He nearly scares the life out of Eames on the landing by coming up behind him. Eames whirls and grabs him, clamping a hand over his mouth. Then he relaxes.

"It's okay," he breathes next to Arthur's ear. There's another creaking floorboard in the next room. "It's them."

He moves forward into the front hallway, and flicks the light on. Both the people standing there flinch away from the light while Arthur hurriedly tucks the gun into the waistband of his pants, under his shirt.

"Hello, Faye," Eames says loudly. "Alizé."

Arthur doesn't think he's imagining the surprise on their faces. Evidently, they didn't expect Eames. There are two of them, male and female. There's nothing to distinguish them from humans except for the scent, rich and earthy like Eames' but without the familiarity. It's the female who makes the first move, stepping forward and smiling. She's strikingly pretty, with long black hair, almond-shaped eyes and high cheekbones.

"Eames!" she says. "It's so good to see you."

"What are you doing here?" Eames demands.

"We were in the neighbourhood," the male says gruffly. He's staring at Arthur as he says this.

"Really," says Eames. "Because you were in Kenya all of a week ago."

"I know you," Arthur blurts out before they can reply to this. He's looking at the female. "You're in dreamshare."

She flashes a pretty smile at him. "I'm a chemist. And you're a point. You're _the_ point, as I hear it."

Eames scrubs a hand over his stubble, then says tiredly, "Arthur, this is Faye and my cousin, Alizé. You two, this is Arthur."

Alizé keeps his distance, but Faye happily extends a hand for Arthur to shake. He does, sizing her up, gauging her strength by her grip, but she gives nothing away. She could be nothing more than a petite human girl, except for her scent and the way it makes Arthur's tail prickle unpleasantly. He nods tersely at her, wondering at the strangeness of shaking hands with a person who's just broken into his house in the middle of the night.

"He's pretty, Eames," she purrs. Eames doesn't blink or react, poker-faced. She adds, "But he smells."

"I'm slightly feline," says Arthur. There's no point in lying to somebody whose sense of smell rivals his own; Eames taught him that. "And you're a werewolf."

Alizé comes forward, sniffing curiously, while Faye says, "You're very astute."

"That's why I'm the best," says Arthur simply.

She smiles again, as if she genuinely likes him.

"I heard the rumours," she says. "About you two. I didn't expect to find you here, though," she says to Eames. "I thought you were supposed to be in Auckland by now."

"You were supposed to be in Cape Town last week," Eames says sharply, at once. His tone becomes belligerant. "Did you drop out when Arthur turned you down? You know that as soon as I heard you were on that team I'd have told him not to go."

"I just wanted to meet him," she says.

"Stop bullshitting me." Eames' voice drops to a growl. He moves very close to her. "Tell me why you're stalking my partner across the globe."

Faye fidgets under his hot stare. At last, she starts to say, "Your parents ..."

Arthur isn't watching Alizé anymore, and doesn't see the look of hunger that crosses over his face right away. Eames is no longer standing between them. He moves faster than Arthur can anticipate, and all of a sudden he's forcing Arthur against the wall, gripping a fistful of his shirt and sniffing over the pulse point in his neck.

At once Arthur draws the gun he'd tucked into the waistband of his pants and shoves the barrel into the werewolf's abdomen, but that's all he has time to do before Eames rounds on the offending male with a sound no human could utter, halfway between a snarl and a roar. Alizé is ripped off Arthur and flung to the floor in an instant.

Standing over him, Eames bites out, "If you ever touch him again I will rip your hand off and _make you eat it_ , Alizé, I swear to Christ."

Alizé tips his chin back as if in defiance, but when Eames' shoulders relax slightly Arthur realizes he's showing his throat. Eames steps back, a look of inhuman fury twisting his expression.

Arthur isn't sure whether to be touched or annoyed by Eames' protectiveness. He opts for the latter, shoving the gun back into his pants self-consciously. "I can take care of myself, Eames."

"He reeks of you," Alizé rasps distastefully, as if Arthur isn't even there. He picks himself up slowly. "He smells like a bitch in heat. No wonder you like him."

Arthur can feel all the fur on his tail suddenly flatten in consternation. He's not in heat anymore. How can he still smell like that?

"You shut up." Eames turns back to Faye. "You, keep talking."

"Your parents just want to know what you're up to, how you're doing ..." Faye trails off under his intense stare.

"And _what_ you're doing," Alizé growls, still staring at Arthur. Arthur stares back, watching his shoulders tense, silently challenging him, but Alizé doesn't move. He's taken Eames' warning to heart.

"You can tell them I'm fine and I haven't forgotten the conditions of my return, as always," Eames says coolly to Faye.

"Well," says Faye, shifting her weight uneasily. "They want you -- to return."

Eames stares. "But I haven't--" he starts, then snaps his jaws shut and turns his head to look at Arthur.

"I wasn't the one who told them," Faye says hurriedly.

"Told them what?" Arthur interjects, irritated at being left out of this conversation. Eames glances at him again, expression softening for an instant, and his fingers twitch like he wants to reach for Arthur's hand.

"I'm not allowed to go back to my pack until I take a mate," he says, after a pause.

Arthur's mind flies over the possibilities there. Do Eames' parents know about him, then? Are they displeased? Or do they mean to force him to return, now that he's got Arthur? Before last night, Eames had never talked about his pack before; Arthur has no idea what kind of feelings he has one way or the other about them. He frowns, and addresses Faye.

"You came here looking for me, not Eames. You didn't know he'd be with me."

"They want to meet you too, kitten," says Alizé. The word sounds so much more vulgar coming from him than from Eames. He adds dryly, "So we can nip this in the bud, as it were."

"Don't you get sick of this?" Eames asks Faye, ignoring Alizé altogether. "Being a tool for them? Following me around, dangling yourself in front of me on their orders, year after year?"

"I like seeing you," Faye says, lifting her head. "You've changed. You used to be happy to see me, too."

At these words, for no discernible reason, jealousy rips through Arthur like a bolt of lighting. He scowls, and Eames shakes his head. "Go out and get yourself a mate already, Faye."

"Like you did?" Alizé interjects, with a pointed look at Arthur.

The hallway falls silent. Eames says nothing, but the air around him suddenly seems to crackle. There's a new scent coming off him and Arthur surreptitiously presses his tongue to the roof of his mouth to taste it. It's sharp, like the smell of him before a full moon, like ozone and charged ions. His silent anger seems to fill the hall like a tangible presence. Faye drops her head and Alizé, too, eventually lowers his gaze to the floor.

"Get out of this house," Eames orders quietly. "Now."

To Arthur's surprise, they do. Alizé casts a last hungry look at Arthur when he goes, his nostrils flaring for a last lungful of his scent, making Arthur narrow his eyes and Eames growl sharply. Faye hesitates on the doorstep.

"They expect you before the end of the month," she says.

"They have no right," Eames says, but he sounds like he's trying to convince himself more than her.

She glances at Arthur again, and says quietly, "It's not legitimate, Eames. They have every right."

Then she's gone back into the night.

Eames slams the door shut behind her, then leans against it, his forehead resting against the glass window. His fingers dig into the wood like he wants to claw through it, and he slams a palm against the door in frustration.

Arthur comes up behind him and touches his shoulder cautiously. Almost at once, Eames turns and pulls him into a tight embrace.

"I won't let them take you," he says fiercely, his voice muffled in Arthur's shoulder. "I won't let them take you from me, Arthur. I won't. I swear. I _swear_."

Thinking about the possessive feral power that had emanated off him just moments before, Arthur wonders who would try.

+  
+  
+

Arthur will never forgive Eames for bringing him here.

He's got nothing against Alaska. He really doesn't. But Eames failed to mention, when he brought up this trip, that it rains about three hundred days out of the year in this particular location.

Ketchikan, Alaska. Where the houses are built on stilts and the local football field is made of concrete because it's safer to play on pavement than mud.

After two weeks of solid rain, Arthur is just about out of his mind.

“I like it here,” Eames protests. Tourist season is over, but they're dining where the locals eat anyway, because it's more out of the way ( _of what?_ Arthur had demanded, knowing the answer full well, but Eames just scowled).

“You hate it as much as I do.” Flies buzz around their heads, dipping down to investigate the food. Arthur waves them away with a hand irritably. “This place is miserable.”

“It's beautiful,” Eames argues.

“When you can see through the mist, sure,” Arthur allows. More flies descend around them, and Arthur snaps. “Fuck! Why hasn't the cold killed these things yet?”

A waitress behind the counter glowers at him. As far as the town is concerned, Arthur and Eames are just a pair of tourists who should've left on the last cruise ship. They've plainly outstayed their welcome. (In fairness, Arthur knows it's mostly him. He complains about the quality of the food, the flies, the weather, Sarah Palin, etc. every time he comes in here.)

Eames hums and tactfully says nothing, gamely making his way through yet another meal of fish and chips. Arthur tries, but gives up when a fly lands on his food.

“Look,” Eames says quietly, once they've left, pulling their hoods up against the frigid drizzle automatically. “This is a good place for us, for awhile at least. It's cut off from everything, it's remote enough that no one would think of it. And the full moon's coming up. I can finally stretch my legs in this wilderness without being seen, and any damage would be chalked up to a rogue grizzly.”

“It's fine for you,” Arthur hisses. “What about me, Eames? I miss the _sun_. And it wasn't my choice to come out here, _I_ have no problem meeting your family—”

“Because you don't know what they'll do to you!” Eames hisses back.

“In case you haven't noticed, I'm not exactly helpless!”

Eames just shakes his head, scattering droplets, frustrated.

When they get back to their motel room, they both shed their jackets. Arthur feels damp all over. He turns up the heater and strips down to his boxers and a clean, dry t-shirt. His tail is fluffed out with displeasure. He glares at Eames.

“I want to go somewhere sunny.”

“We will,” Eames promises. “We will. We'll spend the winter here and then in spring—”

“ _Winter?_ ” Arthur sits on the bed, arms folded. “You're out of your mind if you think I'm spending the entire winter here. I'll stay as long as the full moon, Eames, but then I'm leaving. With or without you,” he adds.

He's shown his hand. Eames winces. He'll go anywhere with Arthur, anywhere, and for Arthur to use Eames' feelings for him as leverage is low. Even he knows that.

Rather than say anything right away, Eames joins him on the bed. He pushes Arthur down gently and envelops him with his arms, pulling their bodies together.

“I want you to be safe,” he murmurs into Arthur's hair.

“I'll be safe.”

“You're safe here.”

“But I'm not happy here.”

Eames draws his head back suddenly, his voice going sharp. “I hate this just as much as you do, you know. Of course I'd rather be in Mombasa, or working a job. Not hiding out like this. You know I hate spinning my wheels. But you're safe, and we have each other. That's enough to keep me in one place for a lifetime.”

His tone crackles with impatience, but in the silence that follows, he slips a hand down Arthur's back and squeezes his tail, stroking it softly. Arthur squirms against him in token protest before lying still again.

“Eames, it's been two months. We can't run from your family forever.”

Immediately Eames pulls him closer, burying his face under Arthur's jaw.

“I'm not ready,” he mumbles. “I'm not ready yet. What if I lose you?”

He's fatalistic every time he talks about Arthur meeting his pack, and that confounds Arthur. For goodness' sake, they're Eames' _family_ , and Arthur's his mate. Surely they can find some common ground. He squirms again, so he can breathe.

“We're leaving,” he says. “After the full moon. And we're going to Miami,” he adds decisively. He's sick of rain. Arthur needs palm trees and sun.

Eames squeezes his tail again, and it seems to Arthur to be a clinging gesture.

“Okay,” he murmurs after a minute. “Alright. After the full moon.”

Arthur cannot help but think that Eames is going to play him, because Eames is a con man and Arthur is paranoid and old habits die hard all around. And he knows Eames doesn't trust him, either; that night when they go to bed he can sense Eames coming instantly awake and alert every time Arthur so much as shifts his weight on the mattress. The tension between them is palpable.

And he could leave. He could slip down to the marina, catch a boat to the tiny island where Ketchikan's airport is located, find an aircraft sophisticated enough to get him back to civilization. He could make for Miami on his own and even, if he were feeling really spiteful, make it outrageously difficult (failing impossible) for Eames to find him.

But he doesn't.

Sometimes Arthur scarcely recognizes himself these days.

 

+

Arthur has had exactly three failed romances in his life, spread out between all the one-night stands that were fuelled by nothing more than loneliness or frustration or heat:

The first was in high school. She was red-haired, but not in an off-putting way; her hair was long and straight and shone beautifully in the light, and that's what Arthur remembers best about her. That and the way her hair smelled. He still thinks of her when he catches a whiff of that particular brand of shampoo.

He was a teenager, not yet come into his heat cycles but as hormone-riddled as everyone else his age, and at this time he'd been fighting a lot with his mom—whom he loves, truly, and always has, but he was a teenager and he was different and she didn't understand why it was so hard for him to simply be content with who he was, because to her there was nothing strange about him at all. But Arthur was in high school, where the laws of popularity were governed by a different faction, and he hid who he was desperately. Track pants instead of gym shorts. Baggy jeans and long t-shirts to disguise the sudden movements of his tail that he hadn't yet learned to suppress.

He loved her—Jessica—as best as a teenager ruled by its hormones can love. When he turned sixteen she proposed that they lose their virginities to one another. As a birthday present. He wanted her so badly he didn't even think about saying no.

The second was in the army. His name was Jack. He was dashing and competent and he made Arthur's heart stir in ways it hadn't known for years. He was gay. Arthur could smell the flush of interest that overcame him at telling moments. They kissed once, drunk and far from home, behind a tent where there was nobody to see or report them.

The third was a woman Arthur had seen semi-seriously for awhile in Montreal, between jobs. Her name was Eda and she was refreshingly normal, so far removed from the world of mind-crime and extraction that she didn't even know what Arthur's job was. She baked pastries for a living and her eyes creased at the edges in a smile every time Arthur came into her shop.

Of course, Jessica in high school only wanted to be able to claim something that nobody who hadn't gone to elementary school with Arthur could: that she had seen his tail and yes, it was real and yes, it was completely freaky. They didn't have sex, but she and her friends giggled helplessly every time they saw Arthur in the hallways after that, burning him with humiliation.

After the army, Arthur had gone looking for Jack and been gently laughed off, and told that he was about as appealing as fucking a refrigerator, no offense—“too sterile” were the man's exact words, sterile and just cold; but they could fuck if Arthur wasn't looking for a relationship, so how about it? No, thank you, Arthur had replied, and left, and never did he consider a relationship with another man again. (Until—well.)

And Eda, she invited Arthur up to her apartment one day, blushing and smiling enchantingly. In a panic, she nearly broke his tail trying to pull it off him when he showed her. She'd cried, thinking it a cruel joke of some kind, and told him to get out.

In short: Arthur has been so fucking lonely his whole life.

He can sense Eames pulling away from him now, growing more reserved with the impending threat of his pack looming over them. It's not a surprise. Everybody who knows Arthur begins to withdraw eventually. Arthur braces himself and thinks grimly: _Here it comes_.

 

+

Before now, Eames has always left a few days before the full moon.

Here in Ketchikan, that isn't an option.

He paces up and down their room with a face like thunder, brooding internally. There are moments when he seems to stare at Arthur with literal hunger on his face. His voice is huskier, even deeper than it is normally. Every word is a delicious gravelly rasp down Arthur's spine, vibrating through his whole body. How has he never noticed before just how fucking arousing Eames' voice is? Each dark little chuckle is a purr; every grunt of concession a soft growl.

Arthur can't be blamed if, when Eames comes in from an hours-long walk in the rain, he grabs him immediately and starts pulling at his clothes.

Eames shoves him up against the wall faster than he can blink. Arthur's breath catches in his throat.

“What d'you want?” Eames asks, his voice deceptively soft. “Hm, kitten?”

With anyone else Arthur would scowl and fight off the person who'd dared to take such liberties with him. But Eames' scent rolls over him, and it's so much stronger this week, sharp like electricity. Most of this week, while Eames was out, Arthur had been scoping out jobs on his laptop, not caring if they're tracked down. Today, however, the entire time Eames was out walking, Arthur was in their bed, jerking off to the smell of him but not letting himself come. He feels like a warm bottle of champagne, ready to pop.

“I want you to fuck me,” he pants.

Eames' canines flash in a grin. “Well then, sweetheart,” he husks softly; and scooping Arthur effortlessly, he dumps him on the bed. Arthur pulls off his clothes rapidly while Eames peels off each layer at a more leisurely pace; raincoat, sweater, undershirt, trousers. Arthur waits impatiently on the bed, gripping the sheets.

Before taking off his boxers, Eames walks over to the bedside table and picks up the lube.

“Here,” he says, tossing it at Arthur. His eyes are dark and hooded. “Touch yourself.”

Again, in the back of his mind Arthur knows this is something he should take offense to; but he seems to blink and his back is arched off the bed, thighs spread, and his fingers are slicked and pressing up inside himself. He hisses softly, closing his eyes, and his tail thumps the bed once.

“I know, pet.” Eames' voice is coming from the foot of the bed again. “It's a tight fit. Fuck yourself open for me and I'll give you what you want.”

“Fuck you,” Arthur hisses, working himself open as quickly as he can. His eyes water. The mattress creaks and dips under Eames' weight. Arthur opens one eye to see that Eames has shed his underpants and is kneeling between Arthur's spread legs, jerking himself leisurely with the lube and watching. Eames' predatory smile widens marginally.

“That's enough,” he says after a minute. Arthur stops, withdrawing his fingers gingerly, ready to argue if Eames isn't going to fuck him _right now_.

Eames grabs him by the waist and rolls, dragging Arthur over him.

“I want you to fuck yourself on my cock,” he says quietly. His eyes are still so dark.

Arthur only takes a second to think about it. They haven't done this before. It's always Eames taking control, and Arthur is fine with that, really. But this sounds good too. It keeps his tail out of the way, anyway. Reaching down, he grips Eames' slick length and lowers himself unsteadily. He feels Eames' cockhead at his hole, and has to force himself to sink down onto it—and Christ, this is much easier when Eames is doing it, pushing in so fast Arthur doesn't have time to think about it.

He pushes down a little further, breath gusting out of his chest. The head squeezes in a fraction deeper, barely. His eyes smart and water and his tail is stiff behind him. He knows it's like ripping off a band-aid, that the faster Eames is seated inside him the less it will hurt, but it's so hard to force himself open like this. Eames is so big, splitting him so wide.

He has to stop.

“I can't,” he croaks.

“You can,” Eames croons persuasively.

But it hurts. He's too big and Arthur's too tight. He shakes his head, eyes squeezed shut again. His tail lashes the air helplessly and he knows, all of a sudden, that no matter how relaxed he is, nothing will get Eames in there right now. They'd fucked fast and rough in the night and he's too sore.

“I can't,” he repeats raggedly.

Eames pulls out suddenly. Before Arthur can react, Eames has grabbed him and rolled them over again, caging Arthur against the bed with his body. His breath is hot against Arthur's face.

“You started this, love. You'll finish it.”

Suddenly—maybe because of the pain, or maybe he just doesn't like that rough, demanding edge in Eames' rasping growl—Arthur no longer wants to do this. He throws an elbow into Eames' ribs without warning and relishes his grunt and recoil. Arthur starts to scramble upright, but Eames recovers and with a snarl he lunges. He's got one hand around Arthur's throat in an instant, pinning him flat to the bed again and crushing the breath out of him.

And then, just as suddenly, he's gone.

Arthur rises on one elbow, rubbing at his throat warily. He takes a few deep, steadying breaths before he looks down the bed at where Eames is perched on the edge of the mattress.

The forger's voice cracks. “I am so sorry.”

“Forget it,” Arthur growls.

“I shouldn't have come back here today. And I knew it, but when I smell you, I just—”

“I said forget it,” Arthur snaps. Eames stares up at him desolately, and Arthur says, bitter, “I know what it's like not to be in control of your urges, alright? So drop it.”

“I should leave,” Eames says, after a pause.

“And go where?”

“The forest.”

“In this weather?” Arthur says doubtfully. Eames is nodding, though, serious.

“It won't bother me once I change. The full moon's tomorrow. I'll spend a couple days out there and then come back.”

Arthur drops the hand from his throat, surprised somehow and momentarily distracted from the resentment that's still bleeding through him in spite of his words. “You can do that? Force a change?”

“Of course,” says Eames simply.

“Why don't you ever do that, then? Change for me, I mean?”

“I already told you that isn't going to happen.” Eames' voice is hard. “It's a total crapshoot when it comes to how much control you have over yourself, when you change like that. I could be completely feral. I'd never risk you in that way.”

Arthur just frowns.

“I'm leaving now,” Eames says, getting up. That ragged edge is still in his voice, and Arthur notices that Eames is careful not to look directly at him now. He's still hard. “I'll ... I'll be nearby, alright? You won't be alone. I'll keep you safe.”

“You don't have to go.” Because Arthur knows, in his bones, implicitly, that Eames will never hurt him, no matter what he thinks of himself. There is no doubt in his mind that if he'd said “no”, just now, Eames would have stopped before he did. But Eames just shakes his head unhappily, and pulls on a pair of slacks.

“See you, Arthur,” he says at the door, still bare-chested. He doesn't say _Please don't leave_ , but it hangs in the air between them anyway.

Then he slips back out into the rain, and Arthur is alone. It's the night before the full moon.

 

+

Before leaving for Alaska, Arthur had spoken to Cobb on the phone. They speak a few times a month now, but Arthur didn't realize he hadn't explicitly told Cobb about Eames until Cobb cleared his throat, obviously discomfited, and said, “So I heard about ... I heard that you're ... you and Eames, huh?”

“Oh,” Arthur said. “Yeah.”

For a minute they both waited awkwardly for the other to speak. Cobb broke first.

“Do you trust him?”

Arthur had glanced through the glass door of their balcony in Barcelona to where Eames was standing and smoking. “Yeah,” he said, surprising himself. “Mostly.”

“Arthur ...” Cobb's voice was edging into its weighty dad-tone. Arthur heard him exhale into the phone. “Be careful, okay?”

“I'm not a kid, Dom,” said Arthur.

“I know that. I know you're a grown-up, and that ... well, you probably know more about this stuff than I do. But I want you to be careful, anyway.”

“It's just Eames,” said Arthur scornfully. On the balcony, Eames tipped his head slightly, squinting out at the city.

“I know it is. That's why I'm worried.”

“He won't hurt me.”

“Yeah. Well,” said Cobb. “Make sure he doesn't.”

Arthur hung up. As soon as he did, Eames turned and glanced at him through the door, his expression unreadable.

Suddenly, Arthur had the uncomfortable feeling that Eames' keen ears had picked up every word.

Eames had simply finished his cigarette and come back inside to help pack. Neither of them said anything about it.

 

+

“God,” Eames is murmuring reverently, “you have no idea what a filthy mess you are.”

Arthur gives a strained grunt and a breathless laugh in reply. “I can guess.”

Eames nuzzles the ridges of his spine, panting wetly between his shoulderblades, beyond coherence. He snaps his hips fast and hard, cramming himself as deep inside Arthur as he can get on every thrust. He's already come four times, pulling out halfway so that he can come inside Arthur without tying with him. Lube and come leak down Arthur's thighs, stream out of him every time Eames pulls out to realign himself, and he shouldn't like how it feels, but—it feels so _good_ to be so wet and filthy, to be drowning in the smell of Eames' musk. He rolls his hips, working Eames' cock as best he can when he's already so exhausted.

“God, Arthur, you—” And Eames pulls out altogether, lifts Arthur's hips off the bed, ducks down and swipes his tongue over his hole. Arthur wails, burrowing into the pillow, his tail arching out of the way so that Eames can lap up the mess of fluids running down to Arthur's balls, then lick his way back up until he can shove his tongue into Arthur's quivering asshole. Arthur moans again and again, frenzied, unable to get a single word out.

“So hot,” Eames growls, pressing in with fingers and tongue to Arthur's most vulnerable spot, his whole body scorching to the touch. After a minute, groaning and bucking up onto Eames' tongue, Arthur realizes Eames is mumbling something else, breathily, into the soft pucker of Arthur's hole. _Mine, mine, mine_ ...

“In me,” Arthur gradually hears himself grating out, over and over. He clears his throat; his voice cracks pathetically. “In me, get in me, I want your cock ...”

Eames groans and he's covering Arthur's back again, lapping away the sweat on the back of his neck as he lifts Arthur's tail and pushes back in, slowly. He pauses when he's buried balls-deep, just to feel the tight, clenching heat of Arthur; then he starts to move again, barely pulling back before he thrusts back in. He has to grip onto the headboard; Arthur is wrapped around his pillow, clinging on like he's about to fly apart. His skin itches and burns.

“So tight,” Eames pants against his neck. He shifts, rolling his hips deep, pressing his balls right up to Arthur's hole. “You're so full. I wonder—”

He doesn't get the thought out, but his hand slides to Arthur's navel, where his stomach muscles are clenching and flexing with every thrust, and presses down with his fingers like he wants to feel himself inside of Arthur. At once a throb of pure heat surges up to the base of Arthur's stomach, and he comes blindingly hard on a strangled cry, all over himself and Eames' hand and the covers. The aftershocks tremble all the way down to his fingertips and toes. Every time Eames thrusts up against his prostate, a thin trickle seeps out onto his hand, even though Arthur feels completely emptied of everything but Eames, wrung out like a sponge.

Eames pulls out and flips him swiftly onto his back just seconds before he comes for the fifth and final time, sinking in to the root just as his knot starts to swell. Arthur's spine arches off the mattress and his breath hitches; Eames grabs one of his hands, limp against the covers, and twines their fingers together, letting Arthur squeeze through it.

Then his features tighten, and he snarls his way softly through orgasm, spurting deep inside Arthur to add to the mess that's already there; that he hasn't already eaten out.

“There,” Eames breathes finally, panting. His voice is a rasp. He sinks onto his elbows, pressing their bodies stickily together. “There. Is that what you needed?”

“Yeah,” Arthur says hoarsely. He's sore, used-up, filthy, and he's never felt so content. “Yeah ...”

Eames presses their faces together silently, nosing and mouthing without quite kissing, like he's too exhausted even for that.

“I love you,” he murmurs. “I love doing this with you. I love that you let me do this.”

Even a short chuckle hurts Arthur's stomach muscles. “Eames ...”

“What?”

All of a sudden Eames' face is shuttered, serious, and Arthur thinks maybe he expects to hear something else; but all Arthur can say is, “I like it, too.”

Eames blinks. Embarrassed, Arthur lets his tail curl until the tip of it flicks Eames' back.

Then Eames smiles, dipping his head for a nuzzle again. “You,” he growls softly, affectionately, and Arthur—

Arthur wakes up on the bed in their motel room, curled up in a ball with one hand clamped between his thighs, drunk on the scent of Eames' pillow. The TV is still playing in the corner; he'd fallen asleep with his clothes on.

It takes him a minute to get his bearings. He has to take out his die, roll it on the surface of the bedside table just to be certain he's in reality. There's no PASIV anywhere nearby, no pinprick mark of an IV line; the vision had been half a string of memories, half fantasy, and entirely a chemical-free, organic dream.

Arthur doesn't dream naturally anymore. The only few times he's dreamt naturally, over the past few years, were all when—

His heart sinks. It's early, by two or three weeks at least, but it can't mean anything else; not with a dream like _that_ , not when his sense of smell already feels sharper. 

He is going to go into heat soon.

He groans, dragging the pillow over his head. This cannot be happening, not _another_ early, unscheduled heat cycle. He's starting to sense a pattern, here, and maybe it has something to do with his proximity to Eames... And that's one comfort, at least. It won't hit for at least a few days. Eames will be back to normal by then.

His spine prickles suddenly. That's the only warning he gets before the door is kicked in.

Instantly Arthur grabs the knife he keeps under his own pillow and rolls off the bed, muscles tensed for a fight.

He does not expect to see Alizé standing in the doorframe, with another male werewolf behind him.

“Arthur,” Alizé greets him, leveling what looks like a paintball gun at him. Then he shoots.

 

+

It doesn't technically rain, in Ketchikan, all the time. Instead, mostly, the precipitation seems to hang in the air like a fine veil. A miserable grey drizzle to smother all scents.

In the damp woods, the hunter is alone. It's a surprise when he meets one brown bear shambling along, and both stop short when they see each other. They are both still for a moment. Then the bear grunts, a little coughing sound, and ambles on its way. The hunter slides past it, shrewdly eyeing it up, measuring it as a competitor in his territory. The bristling fur on his nape relaxes somewhat when the bear flumps down and starts grubbing for roots.

It's been raining half the night, but the hunter had found shelter in a scoop created by the vast roots of a tree. Now, in the early hours of the morning, with the rain slacking and his stomach cramping, he stalks the forest for prey. He knows there are humans nearby, even with all the scents of the forest muffled by the damp, but there is easier prey to be found. He surprises a little owl eating a mouse on the ground, and gains two snacks, gulping the owl down feathers and all.

He knows there is a pressing, primal need pounding in the back of his skull, and can't pinpoint it. He leaves marks, staking a territory for himself, but that isn't it. He flexes his paws, digging his nails into the soft loam, and lifts his nose to scent the air. Something is—off.

He marks a tree and starts picking his way down a muddy slope towards the town. The next time he inhales, the blood quickens in his veins.

A female werewolf.

He bounds down the slope, pads skidding for traction. She meets him among the trees, her tail tucked low and head cocked to lick at the underside of his muzzle when he stalks up to her, his ears pinned forward and tail curled over his back as a flag of rank. She doesn't challenge him. He towers stiffly over her, almost twice her size. When he doesn't relax right away, she crouches low and laps at his jaw, crying out her helplessness with her body language.

He sniffs her all over, circling while she crouches there. He doesn't mount her. He knows this slim-framed black she-wolf. He knows her, but she isn't his mate.

He spurns her, disappointed, but doesn't chase her off. Now he knows what he needs. He wants to find his mate. He sniffs the air again, hopeful, but the rain seems to drown everything. The urge to mate chews at him like tiny teeth, crawling through his fur from his sheath to his belly. He wants his mate.

He starts determinedly into the trees, but the she-wolf bounds in front of him. He stops. She lets her tongue loll out slowly, a mischievous look.

He steps to the right. So does she.

He growls at her, laying his ears back, but doesn't strike at her. She's a female. She grins at him like she knows he won't attack her, and when he steps to the left, so does she.

He feints. She's there to block him at once. Her tail waves slowly, playfully, and the hunter lets his shoulders relax and joins her game for a moment. He shoulders up against her, mouthing her ear, and barrels her back a few paces quite by accident with his weight alone. She wheels away, loping around the trees, and he gives chase.

After a few minutes she surprises him when he rounds the base of a vast trunk and finds that she's doubled back to meet him. He stops, and she pushes against him, licking at his jaw again as if to reward him for his playfulness. He lets his tongue rasp several times over her forehead, instead, distracted for the moment. He could crush her skull in his jaws, but she isn't afraid.

She brushes against his chest deliberately, her scent invading his nostrils and blocking out all else, and the smell of her excites his blood again. He wants to _mate!_

He shunts her aside with his shoulder and picks up a ground-eating lope, hoping to catch some faint trace of his mate's scent. He knows it like he knows the smell of his own mother; it's ingrained in him, exciting him. His claws churn up dirt as he gallops through the wood.

The she-wolf is a slinking black shadow, sliding into his path. He pulls up short and lets her know he has no more time for her games with a curled lip, showing off the full length of his serrated second canine. She sidles toward him, coy and furtive.

Distracted again, the hunter doesn't immediately catch the new scent on the breeze. When he does, his mane bristles all the way down his spine, his head snapping up and a growl bubbling in his chest.

There are male werewolves in his territory.

He takes off again, bulling the she-wolf out of his way. She flies past him again, but not to stop him this time; her retreating hindquarters vanish into the dark. He follows her, furious that any male would intrude without asking his leave.

When he gets nearer to the human buildings, another scent mingles with the others, making the blood pound so furiously in his veins that a pink mist rises behind his eyes. The other males have been this way, and they're tracking his mate.

He pauses only briefly when he finds the point where their paths intersect, sniffing at the gravel outside the building where his mate was supposed to be safe. He smells blood. A drop or two of it is his mate's, and that makes his mane stand on end with fury; but most of it belongs to one of the werewolves. The scent's human enough, though; the other werewolves are not changed, even though the moon is almost a full circle in the sky. Good. Their soft flesh will be all the easier to tear.

He's tracking all of them, now, pounding through the dark empty streets—the werewolves, the she-wolf, his mate, they're all together—and then he hears a faint sound at the end of the street that makes his ears lift. A rumbling, coughing engine.

The wolf brain doesn't know engines, but he does know where his path is taking him. He can smell the salt water. Leaping a fence in one flowing bound, he hits the jetty with a four-beat thud of paws and keeps going.

A second werewolf comes tearing out of the darkness without warning. It's one of the males, a sleek chocolate brown, heavier than him. That doesn't stop the hunter from meeting him with a snarl and a snap of teeth. The brown responds in kind, and they grapple shoulder-to-shoulder for a few seconds, trying to close their teeth on each other's mane or face.

The hunter knows this wolf, grew up with this wolf. He is a subordinate. The fact that he's challenging the hunter on his own territory, his tail raised aggressively, enrages the hunter. He lays open a wound on the other's shoulder and, falling back, he bares his teeth and swings his head. His canine tooth deals the brown a cracking blow to the side of the head.

But rather than acknowledge the hunter's dominance, the brown shakes it off and lunges again. The hunter smacks him in the face with a vast paw, spinning aside, but the brown automatically rears and grabs him around the neck. The hunter does the same, trying to shove him off with one shoulder. He's growing angrier now. This fight should have ended before it could escalate into them potentially killing one another. Now there is too much at stake: the land, his mate. The brown bears down on him with all his weight, and in one neat twist, the hunter's feet are knocked out from under him.

He lands on his side with a grunt and knows at once that he's made a potentially fatal mistake: he's lost his footing. The brown's eyes gleam hungrily. He pounces. With an effort, the hunter twists onto his back and curls up to meet his attack, jaws open. Their teeth clash, making his head ring. He feels soft flesh and clamps down hard. His teeth are locked around the other's upper jaw.

The brown's teeth dig into him. Its eyes are wild with fury. Its tongue lolls out and it wrenches its head mightily, shaking him as it would its prey. The hunter hangs grimly on. He can feel the other panting into his mouth. He lets the brown pull him to his feet, pads splaying against the dock for purchase when the brown tries to drag him.

The other werewolf's breathing becomes more and more of a rasp, its efforts to get free growing weaker and weaker. When it tries to claw him, he bites down harder and yanks it off balance. His canines chafe and slice the sides of the brown's muzzle and blood runs into his mouth.

Finally, exhausted, the brown goes limp. His tail hangs and he laps awkwardly at the hunter's lower jaw. The hunter releases him, swiping a tongue over his own nose and watching as the brown gets to his belly, the whites of his eyes flashing in submission.

_My mate_ , the hunter thinks, satisfied. He moves to step past his opponent.

The brown surges up underneath him like a tidal wave. With sheer force, he sends the hunter tumbling off the dock and into the water.

Enraged, the hunter flounders and fights to get his snout above the water. It takes him several efforts to haul himself, dripping, back onto the dock, and by then the brown wolf is gone. There's a boat rumbling at the end of the jetty. The hunter looks just in time to see the brown gallop down the dock and leap in.

The boat begins to drift away. Furious, the hunter doesn't falter for a second. He hurtles down the dock and leaps straight back into the frigid black water, but—the boat is already farther away, and it's going faster. He churns rapidly into the wake it leaves behind, snuffling for breath. The water soaks his thick coat, and the air trapped in his fur helps to buoy him. His strokes are powerful and he carries himself quickly through the water, but the waves batter him and clog his sensitive nose. He has to keep blinking, gulping air and water alternately, and the boat is going away. It's going away too fast for him to keep up.

They're taking away his mate.

He swims for what feels like forever, until his limbs are heavy and tired and he's choking on water because he can hardly keep his nose up. He keeps swimming until long after the boat has disappeared and he can't even hear or smell it anymore, until land is almost out of sight. Only when his survival instinct kicks feebly in and tells him that he'll drown if he keeps struggling on like this does he at last turn, exhausted, back toward the shore. He's carried himself so far that it isn't Ketchikan he lands at but an island in the strait. He hauls himself weakly onto the pebbled strand.

Dawn light glows faintly on the horizon. His mate is gone.

A new surge of energy fights its way through the hunter's body. He gets to his feet and lets all the helpless rage and fury boil over in him, tearing up his throat. He screams, railing against the unheeding sky for allowing his mate to be taken from him. All the birds in the trees nearby wake and scatter in alarm. The hunter screams, rages, howls until he can't draw breath to do so anymore, and then he sinks to the sand. He lies there, curled in on himself in a tight ball, and moans until he falls asleep.

+  
+  
+

Arthur drifts murkily to consciousness feeling rather like a truck has run over his skull. Even his blood seems to be moving sluggishly in his veins. His tongue feels like a carpet. He can hear Alizé's voice and another, unfamiliar male's. He keeps his breathing deep and even, his eyes closed, to feign sleep.

“... for the pack leaders to decide, not you,” the other male voice is snapping out. “We've already dealt Eames a massive insult by kidnapping his partner. You told me he would be on his own, that we were to approach him and ask him to come with us. You said nothing about drugging him and then fighting Eames on our way out!”

“I was following orders,” Alizé hisses. “They said to bring Eames and his boyfriend home. I tell you, the second they caught wind of us they'd have been gone someplace where we couldn't track them. Trust me, Micah, the only way Eames will go home is if he thinks his mate is there.”

“And if he's not Eames' mate?” the other growls.

“You didn't see them in Toronto,” Alizé states flatly. “He's Eames' mate.”

Arthur's brain is throbbing thickly in his skull. He takes a slow breath in through his mouth, surreptitiously, to better taste the air. The wild, musky odour of recently-transformed werewolf hangs heavily in the air—Arthur's a little horrified when the scent sends a little thrill straight to his cock (he can't help that some of his favourite memories of sex are attached to that smell). He can smell that Faye is in the room as well as the males, lurking off to one side. He can smell the high tempers and anxiety in the room, too. His hands are bound behind his back—duct tape, he thinks, testing the bonds—so that he's lying on his arms. His shoulders cramp acutely.

“We'll figure this out when we get home,” Micah finishes. “It's not up to us anyway.”

“I don't think—” Faye starts to speaks up quietly, uncertainly, but Alizé cuts her off with a snarl.

“You,” he spits in the direction of Faye's voice, “you said that sedative would start to work instantly. He almost put a knife through my shoulder in the car park.”

“I misjudged his weight. He's heavier than he looks.” Faye sounds sullen. “And I said it would _start_ to work instantly. It did.”

Alizé snorts. “The two things you're good for, and you fuck up one and won't even try the second.”

“We _are not_ extracting from him, Alizé,” Faye snaps, and there's a new, authoritative bite in her voice. “Extracting from an extractor is nearly impossible to begin with, and they say he's the best there is. He'd run circles around me. If you've got loads of money to hire an even better extractor than him, then you're holding out on me, and Eames would already be on us by the time we could do it. It's a stupid idea, I'm telling you. There are much easier ways to get information. Like _asking_.”

“As if he'd be truthful. You know Eames has taught him what to say.”

The more conscious Arthur becomes, the worse the pain in his arms grows, the more aware he becomes of the ache in his shoulders. At last he has to fidget, trying to relieve the cramping of his muscles. The three bickering werewolves are all looking at him when he opens his eyes.

They're in a hotel room. The curtains are drawn over the windows. Arthur catalogues each detail quietly.

“Hello,” the unfamiliar male, Micah, breaks the ensuing silence. “Are you comfortable?”

It's a stupid question. Arthur has been unconscious for over twenty-four hours. His mouth is dry and tacky, his head is throbbing, he has to go to the bathroom, and his arms are ready to fall off, numb under his own weight.

He pushes himself upright and stretches his hands over his head, then down in front of him, wincing at the creak and pop in his shoulder followed by the painful tingle of blood starting to re-circulate.

“More comfortable now, thank you,” he says.

They're still staring at him like they've never seen a double-jointed person before.

“My name is Micah,” Micah says finally. “I'm sorry we had to meet under such disagreeable circumstances.” He approaches Arthur like he's a live grenade, pulling out a pocket knife slowly and deliberately so that Arthur can see, and begins to saw at the duct tape. “There was a ... miscommunication.”

“I see,” Arthur says. His voice is dry, hoarse from lack of use.

Micah severs the last strands of duct tape. He takes a not-so-surreptitious sniff before he gets up. “We're going to go to England. You don't have to come with us,” he says, with a pointed glare at Alizé, “but Eames will probably rendezvous with us there, if you'd like an escort. Is there anything you need at the moment?”

Arthur looks at them while he peels the tape off his wrists and rubs life back into his hands. A notion is occurring to him, a thought he's had several times around Eames. Their sense of smell isn't as good as his. Not by half, at least; not when they're in this form. As wolves, it might be different, but like this, their sense of smell is nothing on Arthur's. And so while he can smell that Faye is a little afraid of him, and that Alizé is still angry, and the cigarette Micah smoked before the moon came out, Micah hadn't even been able to smell Eames in Ketchikan, probably until they'd entered the hotel room. And they can't smell Arthur's subtly shifting pheromones until they get very close to him.

He has a couple of days before the heat will take him over entirely, and then the smell will be impossible to miss or ignore; but until then, they simply don't know what to make of him.

“I'd like a shower,” he answers Micah decisively.

To his surprise, both Micah and Alizé look at Faye. She looks a bit surprised to be put on the spot, too.

“It ... it should be fine if we sweep the bathroom first,” she says hesitantly. When both males make for the bathroom to do just that, she avoids Arthur's eyes and shrugs. “I hear stories. You murdered your way through a warehouse full of armed guards with nothing but a pen and the handcuffs attached to your wrists. We're not taking chances.”

Some Krav Maga training and the ability to see in the dark had helped in that scenario, but Arthur just shrugs modestly.

He makes his shower quick. They haven't left him much, but there is a bottle of fragrant shampoo, which he uses liberally as a body wash. That should cover him for the next day or so. They've taken away the hair dryer, so he takes pains not to get his tail wet, so that it won't be dripping down his pants all day.

While he towels off and dresses, he thinks. Despite shooting him with a tranquilizer and leaving him tied up on a bed for a day and a night, the werewolves don't seem unduly hostile. At least Micah doesn't. Binding his arms was probably a precaution against him leaving in case he were to wake while they were out during the full moon. It would seem their mission really is to get him to England, where he's certain Eames _will_ be waiting to tear their throats out. Arthur wouldn't mind doing some of that himself. His tail is bristling furiously.

What he really wants to do is knife Alizé properly, maybe give the other two a few wounds to remember him by as well and then escape. But there's no place he can really go except to Eames, thanks to his impending heat, wherever Eames is now; and he senses the werewolves aren't a threat to him right now. There's no point taking risks when he's not in immediate danger. He'll go with them, he supposes. Maybe Eames will even be there as soon as they land, to whisk him away so they can suffer his heat together in peace.

When he leaves the bathroom, Micah is talking in a low voice into a cell phone while Faye packs their bags. Alizé, slumped in a chair nearest to the bathroom, smells Arthur coming and turns his head sharply, nostrils flaring. He gets up and starts to walk closer.

At once Arthur slides a foot between Alizé's and sweeps his legs out from under him. As soon as he's on the ground he twists to get his hands under him, and Arthur drops on him and grabs him in a guillotine chokehold. He forces Alizé to the ground, pulling with his arms and bearing down with his legs, and slowly squeezes off Alizé's air flow.

“If you touch me,” he says, feeling his tail ripple with cold anger like an electric current has passed through it, “whatever you think Eames would do to you will look like a _joke_. Are you listening?”

Micah hauls him off and pushes him away before Alizé can respond. Arthur rounds on the other werewolf, ready to defend himself, but Micah is standing back, unconcerned now that Alizé is free. Picking himself up off the ground, Alizé snarls furiously, “I'll kill you for that.”

“Piss off.” Micah shoves him back with one hand when he starts toward Arthur. “You've already been told not to touch him. Eames would flay you for sniffing too close, pet or not.”

Alizé scowls. Arthur could argue, tell them he's nobody's _pet_ , thank you very much, but he doesn't know enough about the pack politics to know whether it would be better or worse to confirm himself as Eames' mate.

He decides to stay quiet on that front for now, and instead says coolly, “I've decided you can take me to England.”

Alizé looks irritated at his supercilious tone. Micah, however, looks relieved.

“I'm glad,” he says. “Alright then. Alizé, get our things together. I'll call a taxi.”

They'd taken some of Arthur's possessions from the room, including his passport, though not the PASIV—hopefully Eames doesn't forget to take it with him, or Arthur will kick his ass (once Eames is through with Arthur's). He follows the three werewolves grudgingly out to the parking lot, their individual scents grating his nose.

“Here.” Faye is holding out a pill to him when he looks up. Her face is inscrutable. “For your headache.”

“Thanks,” Arthur mutters, taking it.

She blinks, still expressionless. “It'll knock you out again. Alizé wants you to take it.”

Arthur holds the pill up, then drops it to the pavement and crushes it underfoot. Faye shrugs.

“I'll tell him you took it. It doesn't matter. You're still coming off the other drugs.”

She's right; it doesn't matter that he didn't take the pill. They cab it to the airport and Arthur realizes, bemusedly, that they're in Seattle—bemused, because his thoughts are already a sluggish haze again.

Baggage check-in at the airport is a blur. They have to wait at their gate for awhile and by the time they board the plane, Arthur's nearly unconscious again. He and Faye are seated together; Alizé and Micah are nearby. He has time to think that that's one comfort, that he doesn't have to spend all those hours in close quarters with either of the male werewolves; but then he just decides that Faye—taking out her headphones and settling in—is no danger to him for the time being. He sleeps.

 

+

He dreams again.

Eames is sinking into him slowly. He stops on every inch or so and just watches Arthur pant for breath, watches the sweat pool in the dip between Arthur's collarbones. Every time he starts to push in again, Arthur gasps and groans.

“You can take it,” Eames whispers. “Fuck, look at you. So bloody tight for me.”

He leans down, forcing Arthur's thighs apart a little more, and Arthur whines. He doesn't know if he wants to tell Eames to just shove it in him already, or stop altogether, but when he opens his mouth, only a sob comes out. Sweat runs into his eyes, making them sting.

Eames' patience is superhuman. Arthur's too tight when they've been apart for a few days, and Eames is determined that Arthur should be able to walk afterward, unlike their first couple times—booze and heat tend to cloud Arthur's ability to judge pain considerably. He just didn't know it would hurt this _much_. In this memory it's been a week since the last time. They've spent an hour on foreplay alone, he's already come once, he shouldn't still be this tight—but it hurts.

“More,” he gasps.

Eames grins and pushes his hips forward, sliding steadily in and not stopping. Arthur wails, arches off the bed, claws his back, and Eames doesn't stop. He doesn't stop until his hips are flush with Arthur's ass, and then Arthur feels Eames' hand at his face, stroking and petting and soothing.

“I'm in. I'm in. I've got you.”

Arthur just clenches his nails deep in Eames' back until he doesn't feel like he's in danger of being split in half, until he can open his eyes, blinking away the stinging salt-sweat. Eames is equally rigid above him, and Arthur realizes he's been lashing his tail against the bed in a blind bid to ease the stretched-out burn of his muscles. The rhythmic constricting sensation of the muscles in the base of his tail around Eames' cock must be incredible.

“Okay,” he says finally, when he can breathe again, “okay, move now.”

“Alright.” Eames' voice is strained. He rocks his hips, sliding back an inch and then forward again, and even this slight movement makes Arthur's spine arch. He builds momentum slowly, and every time he pushes in the breath is squeezed out of Arthur's chest, like Eames' cock is pressing directly up against his diaphragm. He'd believe it; Eames is so fucking deep, filling so much of Arthur. He writhes on the girth of Eames.

It's not rushed or frantic, even though they've been apart for a week; it's slow, and intense, with Eames' eyes burning into his. They kiss without any kind of finesse, and Eames' mouth is hot and possessive. It's starting to hit Arthur, Eames' scent doesn't bother him so much anymore. In fact, when he smells like this—sweat and sex, musky and masculine—Arthur even likes it. It's stupid, he thinks, how close they have to be, how they both need to touch each other, sometimes making the angle of their hips awkward; they have to kiss, they have to press their bodies together, it's a mindless compulsion that neither of them can escape. Maybe they need to smell themselves on each other, afterward—

—and a new feeling rushes through Arthur as he opens himself up more for Eames: The feeling of being claimed. _Wanted_.

It shouldn't feel good, to realize that Eames is marking him like a possession with every bruise on Arthur's hips, every bite mark on his neck. But it does. It feels good.

He's _wanted_.

He blinks awake slowly. He's hard in his pants.

He takes a quick glance around and, affirming that Faye is absorbed in a movie, does a surreptitious waistband-tuck to conceal his erection. With the clamour of different scents in the confined space, maybe she can't smell his arousal.

Christ, but that felt real—he can still feel the phantom ache of Eames inside him. He presses himself deep into his seat.

What if Eames doesn't get to him in time?

_No_. He can't think of that.

His head is killing him. It's a long flight to England.

 

+

After Reno, Arthur and Eames didn't work together again until the Fischer job.

In the span of time between those two jobs, Eames thought about him every day.

This is the thing: it was never supposed to be serious, between them. Eames knew this. At first, it had been all about the hunt. Like Arthur was a piece of meat. Eames wanted to touch and smell and taste him all over, and the hunger burned him up. This nameless desire haunted his jaws when he prowled the woods under the ghostly light of a full moon, knowing that there was _something_ he ought to be stalking, but not knowing what it was. The sheer _want_ made the hinges of his jaws ache and salivate.

He wanted to run Arthur down and mount him over and over and over to the point of exhaustion. Until he burnt that itch right out of his system. Then he could leave Arthur alone. Somehow, Arthur's emotions never entered into the equation. Eames is far too greedy and selfish a man for that.

And then Reno happened, and everything changed.

The memory clung to him. It refused to be washed away. At night he remembered the way Arthur had smelled when his hips bucked with helpless arousal. How tight he'd been. The silky fur of his tail.

And yet this memory wasn't a carnal, lustful haze. It was fascination. He wanted _more_ of Arthur. Wanted to know what he'd smell like when he was fresh out of the shower. How he takes his coffee when he's not mainlining caffeine for the purposes of a job. What compels him to follow a man like Cobb around the globe. He wanted to know where Arthur comes from and what he'll look like in twenty years, if he'll have slowed down at all.

He just wanted _more_.

And it made him long to fill his lungs with Arthur's scent, every second of every day, just to know that he was nearby.

This had never happened to him before. Eames is not a sentimental sort of person. He's an alpha male, for God's sake. He could not be pining over Arthur; it doesn't work like that. He was _stronger_ than that. He'd fucked all sorts of people around the globe and never once gotten this attached.

But Arthur's always been different, of course.

Angry with himself for his childish crush, Eames spent all the time in between jobs trying in vain to drive Arthur out of his head. All his efforts were shot to hell the second Cobb found him in Mombasa and told him there was a new job.

In Paris, Arthur was just as prickly, just as condescending, just as wickedly competent. Eames made the plans, taking over easily, because it's in his nature to lead. Arthur tore his plans apart and made them better. Ariadne watched them bemusedly, and Eames found himself thinking that a person who didn't know any better might mistake his and Arthur's constant back-and-forth banter as something other than what it was. Something like affection.

He knew there was nothing like that sparking in Arthur's eyes every time their gazes met, though. If anything, Arthur hated him now more than ever. And because Eames didn't know what to do with this rejection, he settled back into the role he was accustomed to, and sniped back like a five-year-old tugging Arthur's pigtails.

At night, though, when he was all alone in Sydney, he let himself think about that striped tail hiding under Arthur's tailored suit, and how he would give anything to run it through his fingers again. How beautifully Arthur had fallen apart underneath him. How he would never, ever get the opportunity to see Arthur like that again, because he'd ruined everything in Reno. The only thing to do was to stop thinking about him—but Eames thought about him _all the time_.

Even when the Fischer job was over and done with and Arthur fell off the map and Eames went back to scamming his way through various gambling dens just because he could, he thought about Arthur, Arthur, _Arthur_ , every beat of his heart to the tune of Arthur's name. He wasn't himself. He stumbled around cities in a daze. He found secluded places to transform on full moons and howled his heart out to the sky, aching with loneliness. He was the most pathetic specimen of an alpha male he'd ever seen in his life. Half-crazed, he put out feelers, found Arthur doing a job in Budapest and had actually bought himself a plane ticket when he realized what he was doing. He threw the ticket away.

He understood now. Love had made him its sorry bitch.

Faye caught him up at Niagara Falls, on the Canadian side. It was nighttime. The lights behind the falls made them glow red and blue. It was a rather romantic setting, Eames reflected. She slipped up beside him and they stood, not speaking, for a few minutes.

“Make a hell of a kick, wouldn't it?” said Eames. He added quietly, “If one was looking to wake up.”

She took his gloved hand in hers and said, “Come on.”

They went back to Eames' hotel. In his room he peeled out of his coat and she took off her jacket and her hat and he looked at her, and thought that once upon a time he'd thought he might settle down with her one day, when he'd finally satisfied his wanderlust. She looked back at him steadily.

“What have you been up to?” she asked.

“Inception.”

“Did it take?”

Eames shook his head. It's safer that nobody else knows. He was there with Robert Fischer in that first level of the dream, waiting it out for a week with him before the timer ran out naturally, and he knew it took. It went exactly as they intended, that simple seed of an idea taking root and infecting Fischer's whole body. It reminded him a lot of the idea that had gripped him after his one night with Arthur, growing and growing until it paralysed him under the weight of its inexorable truth: _I love him_.

“Too bad,” said Faye.

She was pretty as ever in the rosy light of the lamp, her cheeks still pink from the cold. Eames' heart hurt. He wished she were somebody else.

“I'm not going to sleep with you tonight,” he said.

It was the first time he'd ever said it. Surprise registered in her face.

“Why not?”

He studied her, Faye—Faye who grew up with him, who knows and keeps his secrets, who followed him loyally into dreamshare just to be that much nearer to him. And he couldn't tell her this. He somehow couldn't make himself say it.

“What's wrong?” she asked, and it struck him that he pitied her, because she liked him and his parents had been taking advantage of that fact for years—and he had, too. She had never asked for this.

He didn't tell her there was someone else. Instead, he said, “You should leave me alone from now on.”

She blinked. Her face became shuttered, and he could tell he'd hurt her.

“Your parents say they love you and miss you,” she said tonelessly, picking up her jacket, “and you can come home and visit any time you want.”

But it's not as simple as that, he thought, watching her leave and slam the door shut behind her. It's just not.

Arthur called him up eventually to let him know that there was a new job, just them and Ariadne to build, and he wanted to know if Eames was interested. Because Eames is and has always been a greedy man, he said yes.

This would, of course, be the best decision of his life.

 

+

Eames is _furious_.

All day and night he had sat, wolf-shaped, on the shore of the rocky island off of Ketchikan, waiting and waiting for the boat to return with his mate; sometimes lying down and crossing his paws and crying softly to himself. Whenever the thought crossed him that he should get up and take action, his dumb canine mind had cried back: What if the boat returned, and he wasn't there to meet it?

Waking up at dawn once the full moon is over, human-formed once again, Eames is so furious with himself he can barely see straight. Twenty-four hours he's wasted waiting on something that isn't going to happen. He changes long enough to make the swim back to Ketchikan and lope into the woods where he'd left his clothing; then he gets to work.

Providence is on his side. The sky is clear enough to take a plane out of town today. He charters the first aircraft willing to go up, taking with him only the barest essentials and the PASIV from their hotel room. From Ketchikan he goes to Juneau, then catches a flight to Vancouver. There, he purchases a ticket on the next flight bound to Toronto, where he'll connect to a flight to England.

He knows where they've taken Arthur, after all.

He has to wait forty minutes in Vancouver Airport and he can't sit still. He jostles a leg, chewing his cuticles obsessively. Then he gets up and paces. He can't breathe. His mate is out of sight, gone. He could be anywhere. He could be dead and Eames wouldn't know. He's sick with rage at himself for lingering in Alaska so long.

But maybe they haven't reached England yet either, he thinks suddenly. They would have had to stop somewhere on the way for the full moon. They couldn't have made it to England in a day.

He pulls out his cell phone and punches in a number by memory.

It rings once. Twice.

Then his mother answers.

“Hello?”

“What the hell have you done?” Eames growls. His voice crackles dangerously.

His mother hesitates. Then she says, quietly:

“Thomas?”

“Yes.”

“Oh ... oh, honey.” Her elation stabs Eames with impatience. “It's so good—”

“Stop,” he bites out, cutting her off. “Alizé took Arthur away. Tell me why.”

Her voice becomes muffled. He can hear her talking to somebody else. After a moment, another voice is on the line: his father's.

“Thomas?”

“What the hell is going on?” Eames barks, stopping short in the middle of the terminal, his hand clenched tightly around the phone. A young couple pointedly steer their stroller away from him. He must look like a mad man, his hair scraggly and unparted, dirt still embedded under his fingernails.

“I don't know what you mean,” his mother says. “Alizé took—?”

“Arthur, he came after us with Faye and Micah and he took Arthur, I think they might have hurt him. You told them to—”

“No,” his father interrupted, gently. “Of course we didn't.”

“Micah was with them, I smelled him there.” Eames' chest clenches tight, because Micah is the pack beta, and Micah being there means it was an order. It must have been. Alizé may be a wild card, but not Micah. “You sent them.”

“We sent them to _talk_ to you,” his mother says, in the same hushed voice as her husband. “We ... we wanted to ask you to come home and bring Arthur with you. We wanted to meet him. That's all.”

He's so angry it burns his throat; he wants to _scream_ with it, like he had after watching that boat disappear over the horizon. He wants to rage at them, he wants to tear into them with everything he's got, but he can't, so he bites down on everything until he can grit out:

“If you wanted to know whether I'd taken a mate you could have called _and asked me_.”

They're both quiet.

“That's not why ...” his mother starts, but Eames cuts her off again.

“Arthur isn't my mate. He's a colleague I fool around with and now Alizé's gone and kidnapped him because he thinks that's what you want.”

“If there's some way to repair this—” his father says.

“Tell Arthur whenever they get there that I'm on my way, if they didn't tear him apart last night. Or vice versa,” he adds retrospectively.

He ends the call. He's squeezing the phone so tight the plastic casing creaks in his hand.

He shoves the phone into his pocket and forces himself to sit back down. His lungs are painfully constricted, like he won't breathe until Arthur's in his arms again.

 

+

Eames' parents are not what Arthur expected, somehow.

He's not sure what he _did_ expect—maybe a whole group of cold, calculating werewolves who would interrogate him. Maybe the kind of elitist, anti-human extremists that get themselves in the news, usually for being arrested every other week.

Eames' parents are ... different.

When Arthur arrives with his escort at Eames' childhood home, a weathered stone house nestled amidst picturesque hills dotted with sheep, the Pendleton-Eameses are watching a game of soccer ( _football_ , Arthur's brain corrects itself) on TV.

Not feasting on raw meat. Not making a blood sacrifice to the moon gods. Not doing anything Arthur might have wildly imagined a pair of werewolves to be doing in their own home.

They turn off the TV when Micah presents Arthur to them, Alizé and Faye loitering in the lobby at the front of the house. Eames' mother, the Lady Pendleton-Eames, is quick to rise and embrace her brother. Eames' father is slower to get to his feet, and Arthur sees why: he has to reach for a polished wood cane to help support him. Arthur bites back his surprise, even though a hundred questions are thrumming through his head.

As soon as Lord Pendleton-Eames is on his feet, it hits Arthur like a punch, all at once, something he'd somehow never considered before:

_Eames' parents are the alphas of his pack_.

Arthur can feel all the fur on his tail flatten at once. He does his best to look impassive. They seem just as curious about him, but he detects something else in their expressions—contrition.

“Arthur,” Eames' mother says first. “It's lovely to have you in our home.”

Arthur clenches his jaw. He can't say the same. He'd rather be in _Ketchikan_ right now, and that's saying something. And the overwhelming werewolf-scent is making his headache worse.

Eames' father limps the few steps forward to close the distance between them, his grey eyes intense and familiar. He offers a hand.

“May I?” he asks.

Arthur extends his own hand, and is again surprised when Eames' father clasps it gently and lifts it, leaning down so that he can sniff over the pulse point in Arthur's wrist. Arthur fights not to snatch his hand away, but his tail prickles in his pant leg with disconcert.

“I see,” Eames' father says quietly at last, releasing him. “Thank you.”

Eames' mother comes closer and does the same thing, again asking Arthur's permission, and he just nods, stymied. When she's smelled him, she exchanges a lingering look with her husband. They seem to be communing silently for a moment.

“I regret that we have to meet you under these circumstances,” Eames' father says finally, turning back to Arthur. His unwavering eye contact makes the fur on Arthur's tail prickle again. “We meant to ask our son to come home and extend the invitation to you. I'm afraid Alizé sometimes interprets my orders a little loosely.”

He smiles, embarrassed and a little troubled at the same time.

“I can see that,” Arthur says.

Micah is gone. It's just him and the ... alphas, he thinks. It's unsettling, but he doesn't feel in danger. They're so ... calm, so quietly assured of their power. Even Arthur can't help but feel grudging respect, and he doesn't even know them. This is the effect alphas have, though, on wolves and humans and whatever Arthur is alike. When Eames spoke of the parents who'd cast him out and banned him, this isn't what Arthur had in mind.

“Please sit,” Eames' mother says suddenly. “Would you like some tea?”

Arthur nods, and she's gone, slipping through the door and leaving him alone with the pack leader.

Arthur sits on a chair adjacent to the television. After a pause, Eames' father sits too, slowly, gripping his cane.

“Not every wound can be transformed away, unfortunately,” he says in answer to Arthur's open stare, smiling again and touching his leg. “This is an old injury from a challenge to my authority.”

“A hazard of the job, I suppose,” Arthur says.

The man chuckles. He never loses the intensity in his eyes, though. They're like Eames' eyes, somewhere between blue and green, almost a steely grey colour. Arthur surreptitiously wipes his palms down over his slacks.

“May I ask what you are?” Eames' father says, when a moment of silence has elapsed.

“Slightly feline.”

“You don't have a name for your kind?”

“No.” He feels a little let down. Maybe somewhere in the back of his mind, he'd hoped the werewolves might have answers. “I'm the only one of my kind that I know of.”

“That must be hard,” says Eames' father evenly.

“I guess.” Arthur wipes his palms again. He's already starting to feel hot all the time. How soon will his change in hormones be noticeable?

“Do you change?”

It takes him a second to work out what the man means. He shakes his head. “I was born with feline ears. And I have a tail.”

He doesn't really mean to say it; it just happens. Maybe it's those familiar eyes, or that his scent is similar to Eames', but Arthur feels quite secure here.

“Fascinating,” says Eames' father.

They wait for Eames' mother to return. Arthur thinks about what he knows of werewolves and their mating customs. The males are sexual beings who will willingly mount either gender, not confined to the labels and prejudices of humans—Arthur remembered this fact because it put him in mind of his own attitude toward sexual preference. Maybe that fact will make this less uncomfortable, anyway, werewolves not being picky—because they _must_ know that Arthur and Eames are at least fucking, there's no way that would have slipped past Faye and Alizé in Toronto.

But then there's the inescapable fact that despite their nondiscrimination, same-sex mated pairs are rare among werewolves. It just seems to happen that way. Werewolves come with such a powerful drive to procreate, and at the end of the day they'll almost always find their proper love in someone who can give them cubs.

Except Eames.

Alizé is talking quietly in the lobby to Faye. With normal human hearing Arthur wouldn't catch it, but even without his ears, his hearing is sharper than most. They don't realize that.

“Disgusting,” Alizé is murmuring. “I don't know how Eames does it. Like fucking a bloody alley cat.”

Eames' father is gazing distractedly out the window. Arthur sinks back into his seat. He's starting to wish he'd just stayed in Alaska.

 

+

Eames' mother returns with a teapot and cups on a tray. She fixes Arthur's tea for him. He takes a polite sip and nearly burns his tongue, but doesn't care. She sits on the couch next to her husband, so they're both facing him. And here it comes. They're going to tell him to fuck off away from Eames because it isn't proper for a werewolf to have a male mate. He takes a deep breath.

“Thomas gave us a call earlier today,” Eames' mother says, before Arthur can speak. “He ... explained the situation.”

Arthur wets his lips with another sip of tea. Thomas, that's Eames. “Oh.”

“We're so sorry to have gotten you tangled up in this,” Eames' father says, and he sounds it, too. “We didn't mean for it to go this far. We had only heard that our son might have a romantic interest in you, and wanted to meet you. Apparently we were mistaken.”

_Mistaken_.

So Eames lied to them.

Why?

Arthur just nods dumbly when he realizes they're waiting for a response, and takes another gulp of tea. He feels oddly cold now, instead of hot, for the first time in hours. This is possibly the most uncomfortable situation he's ever been in, and the potential for uncomfortable situations is limitless when one is hiding a tail under one's clothes.

“He told us to tell you he's on his way here,” Eames' mother cuts back in. “You're free to leave, of course, but we made up a guest bedroom for you, if you wanted to rest ...?”

“Thank you,” Arthur mumbles. Being utterly confused and in a huge amount of discomfort doesn't leave him bereft of his manners, after all. “That would be great.”

“And of course you must have supper with us,” she says quickly. “It's the least we can do.”

“Thank you,” Arthur says again. He's too hungry to refuse the offer. Eames' mother beams, relieved.

Supper turns out to be duck a l'orange. Alizé and Micah are both gone, but Faye joins them, sitting quietly at the end of the table. While they make their way through a salad course, Eames' parents ply Arthur with questions. They seem to be genuinely, earnestly fascinated by him. For that reason Arthur answers any questions he's able to. He tells them about his mom, and what growing up was like, and why he decided to join the army, and which of his senses he's learned differ from humans', like how moving things tend to jump to the forefront of his vision. In spite of the discomfort of his impending fever, he finds himself relaxing gradually. Talking to the werewolves is—nice, actually, they listen intently and they don't judge him, because they're different too.

They tell Arthur about their pack. Their family has lived here for generations, claiming the hills as their own and learning to live semi-comfortably with the humans around them. And they tell him about Eames.

“It's very common for a young male to venture away from the pack, especially an alpha,” Eames' mother explains. “Of course, a father and son will get along peacefully enough, but the sons do eventually reach an age where they get a little more hot-headed, need some more space. That's usually the time when they find a mate, away from their family.”

“That's what we thought would happen with Thomas,” Eames' father says ruefully. “We told him he was welcome home when he'd found somebody. That was years ago. He should have settled down by now.”

“We're not getting any younger,” Lady Pendleton-Eames adds.

“Is that necessary, for him to have a mate before he can take over the pack?” Arthur asks.

Eames' father nods and his wife says, “It's important, in our culture.”

“Why?” Arthur asks. Faye suddenly looks up, shooting him a glare, and he fumbles. “I only ask because I don't know very much about your—culture—”

“Of course, Arthur. We don't mind answering your questions,” the Lady says gently. “We like to know that our pack will have a future, that's all.”

Arthur nods and focuses on his duck, which is a little greasier than chicken but incredible to somebody who hasn't eaten in a day. He wonders grouchily why Faye is even there. She's not a very high-ranking wolf in this pack, judging by the way Micah and especially Alizé speak to her. Eames' parents simply don't address her very much, but when they do, they're kind. When she excuses herself from the table and vanishes upstairs before the dessert course (custard trifle), Arthur makes the uncomfortable realization that she lives here with them—when she's at home, at least.

Eames' mother leads him upstairs once he's finished a last cup of tea. On their way up to the third floor, he thinks about why Eames had tried so stubbornly to keep Arthur away from his family. _You don't know what they'll do to you_ , he'd said. But they're not doing anything. Eames had said he'd been cast out, but they make it sound like he left to join the military and simply chose never to come home again.

Disgusting, Alizé had called him. Maybe—

Maybe Eames has been keeping Arthur away from his family not to protect him, but because he's ashamed. Ashamed to have taken Arthur for a mate. Freakish, male, ( _disgusting_ ) not-even-human Arthur. Maybe being cast out was a lie to make Arthur think he _couldn't_ go home, rather than wouldn't.

Or maybe they wouldn't be this hospitable if they knew the truth, and Eames is protecting him.

Arthur's head hurts.

“There's a towel here if you'd like to bathe. The lavatory is the third door on the right there. If there's anything else you need—”

“Thank you,” Arthur says, automatically. The room is cosy and dimly-lit and smells like dust and fabric softener, so sharp it's almost enough to burn Arthur's doubly-sensitive nose at the moment. There's just a dresser and a double bed, freshly made up. He sits down on the mattress. “I'll just wait for Eames to get here.”

“Of course,” she says, and with a last gentle smile, she leaves.

Again, Arthur wasn't exactly expecting anything when he got here.

But maybe—somewhere in the back of his mind—some tiny, silly part of him had wondered—

If he has no species or family of his own, maybe Eames' family would accept him?

They're very nice, but he thinks about what Eames' mother said about the future of the pack, and recalls how important offspring are to Eames' kind. What reason would they have to be hospitable if they knew that Arthur is the reason their bloodline will end at Eames? His imagination makes up scenarios in which they forbid him to ever see Eames again under pain of death, and he digs his nails into the mattress anxiously. Then he forces himself to relax. They don't seem like elitists. And they do seem genuinely distressed at the way Alizé had interpreted their—invitation.

He gets in the shower to help clear his thoughts, and also because he can still smell traces of the plane on himself. When he gets out, he finds a folded-up pair of sleep clothes on the foot of his bed—a little large for him, but comfortable. He dresses, and almost doesn't see Faye enter his room without knocking.

“You should tell them the truth,” she says bluntly. Eames is not here: she has no need for false friendliness. “They're nice people. They deserve to know.”

“Eames already told them,” Arthur says dismissively, turning to face her. She scowls.

“The _truth_. I know you're his mate.”

“And what makes you say that?” he asks, feigning indifference.

“Because Alizé told me to distract Eames in Ketchikan,” she says. “But it didn't work. He didn't want me.”

Arthur pushes his hair off his face, trying vainly to tame the damp strands. “Have you considered that you're just annoying?”

“I practically rubbed myself all over him,” she says, tone becoming brittler. “And he barely looked at me. An unmated male doesn't ignore a receptive female, Arthur. Especially Eames. I should know.”

“So?” Arthur demands, swallowing the jealous anger that rips through him.

“So he was headed toward the town. Toward _you_. Eames didn't want me because he'd rather have been fucking you.”

Something snaps dully into place in Arthur's brain.

“Eames was in his wolf form,” he says.

“Yes, he was.”

“So why would he come for me?”

“To mate you,” she says, like it's obvious and he's just being stupid. She smiles humourlessly. “Werewolves love sex, Arthur. Doing it when you're both changed, that's considered one of the most intimate things you can do. He'd do it with a female werewolf, so why not with you?”

“Because it's not possible,” Arthur says, trying to rationalize. “Physically. Is it?”

“Not unless you helped him out, probably.” She eyes Arthur like this possibility wouldn't surprise her, him letting himself get fucked by a two-hundred-pound wolf. “But he'd maul you to death trying.”

That sends a little trickle of nausea into Arthur's stomach. So that's why Eames steadfastly refuses to change in front of him.

_What's worse than a werewolf seeing you as its lunch?_ Arthur had asked. The answer, of course: being seen as its mate. Good Lord.

Eames knew, he realizes angrily. Does he wander around every full moon, sniffing and searching for his mate?

“So why not just tell them?” he demands, pushing that thought away for the time being. She scowls.

“Because mating goes both ways. I don't know how much Eames has explained to you, but werewolves mate for life, and they're serious about their partners. You think I haven't heard about you, Arthur? Everyone in the business says you're the best there is, but you're a robot. The only people you've ever been close to are those architects, the Cobbs, and they both went off the deep end. You've got no attachments. You left a man behind in Tokyo knowing he'd be tortured by Cobol Engineering. I don't know what you think you're doing with Eames,” she finishes coolly, “but if you're leading him on somehow, I swear—”

“You know nothing about me,” Arthur snaps, rankled. His tailtip wants to flick in its confines angrily. “Just because you're in love with him—”

Her eyes flash furiously. “I just came to tell you that you should either tell them the truth if you're going to be the reason Eames doesn't come home, or make things easier for everyone and bail on him now rather than later when you'll make everything much worse.”

“I'm not going to bail on Eames,” Arthur says flatly. “And I'm not stopping him from coming home.”

“You've always been the reason he doesn't come home,” she says. “You just didn't know it.”

She slips out of the room, leaving Arthur even more baffled and angry than he was before.

His head throbs, and it's not just the headache. The fever is starting to catch him up. He wants Eames, and he's not sure how much more time he's got.

 

+

It's after dawn by the time Eames' childhood home comes into view.

He floors it, making the engine whine, kicking up a cloud of dirt behind him. His heart is beating in triple time by the time he reaches the bottom of the valley, veering into the long gravel drive up to the house.

He's scrambling out of the car even as he throws it into park, shouting, “Arthur!” The house is just the same as he remembers it: old and weathered, ivy trailing up the face. The front door is unlocked and he hurtles through. “Arthur?”

He can smell him; it overwhelms Eames' senses; and Arthur must have heard him the first time because he's there, there and unhurt, bounding down the staircase. Eames doesn't even see the rest of the house where he grew up. He only has eyes for Arthur, who hurtles straight into his arms.

They clutch each other like survivors of a terrible wreck, wrapped up in one another's arms and burying their noses in each other's shoulder, neck, breathing deep to reassure their senses. Eames wants to never let him go. He's never been so relieved in his life. They cling tightly. He noses at Arthur's jaw, and then Arthur finds his mouth and they kiss: hard and passionate, at first; and then slow, gentling, nothing more than tasting each other's lips. For a moment they pause, panting into each other's mouths.

Arthur leans in just as Eames can hear his parents approaching. Arthur's lips brush his ear. “I need you.”

Eames nods mutely. He crushes his lips to Arthur's forehead for just a second before stepping away, just as his parents appear in the front hall.

“Oh, _Thomas_.” His mum hurries forward and he moves to meet her, enveloping her in a tight hug. His father joins them and Eames takes a moment just to soak in the smell of home.

“I need to go,” he says thickly, all too soon, trying to disentangle himself from his parents. “I'm sorry.”

“But you just got here,” his mum argues. There are tears shining in her eyes.

“I know.” He gives her a last, quick hug and a kiss on the cheek. “I'll come back.”

“When?” his father asks.

“Soon.” He's aware of Arthur fidgeting behind him. “I promise. I'm sorry,” he says again, backing away.

His parents stop arguing. They know they're in no position to ask anything of him right now, not after what they've done. And Eames wants to stay, he wants that more than anything; and for that reason, he pushes himself out the door as quickly as he can.

“'Bye,” he stops to say around the tightness in his throat. And, taking Arthur by the hand, he pulls him out of the house and shuts the door behind him.

Arthur breathes an audible sigh. “Fresh air.”

They get in the car. Eames rolls the windows down, for Arthur's benefit, and starts the engine.

“Where are we going?” Arthur asks, once they're off the driveway and on the country road. He's reclined his seat, head resting comfortably back so that his throat is a tempting curve above his collar. Eames forces himself to look at the road, even while all his skin is itching with the desire to stop the car and climb on top of Arthur and utterly ravage him, leave marks all over him, restake his claim on Arthur's skin.

“London,” he says tightly. “And then, I don't know. Somewhere else. Anywhere. I hear Iceland's nice this time of year.”

Arthur sighs again, softly.

“No,” he says, sounding resigned. “We have to find someplace to stay. I'm just a couple hours away from going into heat.”

Eames doesn't say anything, but he eases the gas pedal down until the engine is a roar and the wind whipping through the windows steals away Arthur's scent, snatching it away from Eames' face.

“Are you okay?” he asks, after they've put a couple miles behind them. “Did they hurt you?”

“I'm okay. Your parents are nice.” Arthur turns his head, stares out the window at the rolling hills, the lush carpets of heather, the distant flocks of sheep—all the sights and scents of Eames' childhood. “You made them sound like monsters.”

“They are monsters,” Eames reminds him: a feeble joke, intended to deflect. Of course, he can never get past Arthur.

“Why didn't you just tell them I'm your mate?”

Eames grits his teeth, staring down the road so hard his eyes blur. It reminds him that he needs to get a proper sleep in at some point, whenever that's possible.

“I don't know,” he says finally. “I wasn't sure you'd want me to say that. It's a big deal to my kind, isn't it. I practically proposed marriage when we'd been together just a couple months. I didn't want you to be ... overwhelmed.”

“Oh,” says Arthur. “Is that all.”

Eames swallows. “Yes.”

“Because I thought I told you I _wanted_ this. I thought I made it pretty clear that I'm in this for the long haul.”

“It's not that easy, alright?”

Arthur leans back into his seat, his arms folded over his chest, chewing his lip. Eames knows all his tells and he knows something's brewing in Arthur's mind, but still he lets it build up for several minutes without speaking.

Arthur doesn't disappoint.

“Are you embarrassed?”

“What d'you mean?” Eames demands roughly.

“Of me,” Arthur presses. “Am I embarrassing? Because apparently you're some kind of big deal around here, and everyone's probably got all these high expectations for you—”

“You don't know what you're—”

“—and then word gets out that you've finally found someone, only it's not some nice werewolf chick, it's this—this freaky, male ... catperson—”

“You're not a freak!” Eames argues hotly, but Arthur continues to talk over him.

“—so of course you'd deny it, right—why wouldn't you? Anyone would. So I'm not angry, I just want to know ... is that the reason you've been trying so hard to stay away from your family? Because you're embarrassed?”

Frustrated, Eames slams his hand against the steering wheel and snaps, “Yes, alright! I'm embarrassed!”

Arthur blinks. “Okay,” he says quietly. Eames huffs out his breath, wanting to snarl.

“I'm embarrassed that I'm such a coward I can't even tell my parents the truth. All my life they've expected me to come home someday and take up their mantle, and I can't _do_ that anymore, alright, Arthur? An alpha is supposed to provide an heir to his pack, and I can't _do_ that. And I don't care, it doesn't matter, I'll give up the whole fucking pack for you, don't think I won't—but I don't want to see the disappointment in my parents' faces when they realize they have to cast me out. It's got nothing to do with you. This is about me and how I'm a bloody coward when it comes to my parents, I always have been.”

He huffs again, disgruntled at himself for having lost his temper. Arthur takes that in.

“Is that true?” he asks. “You can't be in the pack if you can't make an heir?”

“Most likely,” Eames says tersely. “Not as an alpha, I know that much.”

Arthur frowns. “Is that something you wanted?”

“Which part?” Eames asks, then cuts him off before he can speak, opting for honesty. “Doesn't matter. Yes on both counts. I'm a werewolf and an alpha, Arthur. It's impossible for me _not_ to want to have children or be with my pack. But it doesn't matter. We're all about blood and family ties—that's what would make it possible for me to go home right now and take over my pack and they'd respect me and welcome me after a decade of not seeing me, because it's in their blood to obey me. But as a genetic dead end I'm no good to them.”

He's white-knuckling the steering wheel. He forces himself to relax his grip. Then he turns his head and gives Arthur a quick, reassuring smile.

“I already knew all these things when I got with you. You're worth it, Arthur. Trust me.”

Arthur is still frowning. “I don't want you to be without a family because of me.”

“I'm not without family. I've got you.”

Nothing can substitute the pack in a werewolf's life, of course, not even Arthur; that's part of the reason Eames has stayed away for so long—because he knew the second he got home, he'd want to surround himself with his kind and run with his pack again. It's a yearning he's had buried for so long he almost managed to forget about it. Now he's opened that crater back up and he wishes he could tear himself in half, one half to stay here with Arthur, the other to go home, to his rightful place.

In another second he's rejected that thought vehemently. His place is here with Arthur. Unthinkable to pretend otherwise.

“Isn't there any way you could still be a part of your pack?” Arthur asks. “Even if you aren't the alpha.”

Eames clenches his jaw, despising the thought of submitting to somebody else when his father has to step down. “I told you, it doesn't matter.”

“It's because they wouldn't accept me, isn't it,” says Arthur, astute as ever.

Eames has to slow down and pull over to let another car, coming from the opposite direction, drive over a one-lane bridge ahead of them. He lets the car idle there for a minute, trying to figure out how to respond.

“I don't know,” he says finally. “It's complicated, Arthur. Maybe it wouldn't matter to them, maybe it would. The thing is there are ... customs we adhere to ...” He shakes his head, not knowing how to explain. “None of that matters. I wouldn't have a leg to stand on—they'd never see us as mates if I can't even be near you when I change ...”

“Because you'd mount me,” says Arthur.

Eames kills the engine and sits, silent, for a minute. Arthur just watches him.

“There's this old tradition, kind of an unwritten law,” Eames says finally. “Our way of consummating is to mate under a full moon ... as wolves. In the old days it would be the first time a couple tied with each other. It's nice and all, it's nothing we wouldn't do naturally, but really it's just another way of telling us to mate within our own species, because ... a human wouldn't be able to handle it.”

“But your kind take human mates,” says Arthur.

“And turn them, very carefully,” says Eames. “Or else walk away from the pack.”

“And that's why you'll never let me see you change.”

“Yeah, that's why.” Eames knows he shouldn't feel ashamed, but he does. “Not even in the dreamscape. I wouldn't be able to stop myself. And you're not human, Arthur, I don't even think I could turn you if I had the restraint for it.”

Arthur hisses, adorably. “That's off the table.”

Eames chuckles, relieved for the moment of levity. Then he turns and looks at Arthur, who is flushed, his hair slightly rumpled. Eames reaches over and touches his hand: he's already hot. He folds Arthur's hand into his own.

“It doesn't matter,” he says, one last time. “I've got you and that's what's important.”

“You're the alpha,” Arthur says, staring intently at him. “Can't you change the rules?”

Honestly, Eames doesn't know. There have been alphas out there with same-sex mates in the past, certainly, who'd stepped down or been cast out, and there have been alphas who've taken human mates, but he's the only werewolf he knows of who's gotten himself into this particular jam. Nobody would actually expect him to mate with Arthur on a full moon, but elitists like Alizé might use that rule against him, if he came seeking a place in the pack for them both. Maybe his parents would understand, if he spoke to them, but that would involve explaining his situation, and maybe they'd be so upset they'd cast him out right there ... and _that's_ what he can't face, can't even bear to think about.

“Forget it,” he says. “Let's just go. We'll find a job somewhere, we'll forget about the pack ...”

“After you fuck me,” says Arthur sharply. Eames laughs again.

“Of course, pet,” he says fondly. He squeezes Arthur's hand. “As if I could possibly have forgotten.”

 

+

Eames finds them an inn not too far away, much to Arthur's relief. He's shedding his clothes even before Eames has finished drawing all the curtains shut over the windows.

“Wait,” Eames says when Arthur flops onto the bed, rolling about. Arthur growls.

“No. No waiting.”

Eames hesitates, torn—probably thinking about his pack, worrying about Arthur. Impatient, Arthur rolls onto his belly and waves his tail: an invitation he knows Eames can't refuse. Sure enough, after a moment's pause, Eames is there on the bed behind him, closing his hand around Arthur's tail. Arthur lets it writhe in his grip for a few seconds, and when Eames lets it go, he sweeps it across Eames' face.

Eames gets off the bed with a muttered curse, yanking his clothes off as he fumbles through the bag he'd thought to bring in with them. He returns with lube and, when Arthur spreads his knees invitingly, slides a finger in without preamble. For once, Arthur opens right up for him.

“Hell,” Eames grunts. “Did you prepare yourself for this?”

“No. No, I just _need_ you to fuck me.”

Eames stretches him open without finesse, spilling lube over the sheets. When Arthur can take three fingers easily, he withdraws them, lines the head of his cock up, and eases his way in slowly but forcefully. They both groan.

It's the best thing Arthur's ever felt, but he wants more. He needs more of Eames inside him. He rolls his hips, tail lashing against Eames' shoulder until Eames grabs it and holds it still. When Eames is fully sheathed inside him and he takes a second just to breathe, Arthur nearly becomes frantic, rocking back against him, tearing at the sheets.

“Fuck me. Fuck me _now_.”

“Alright, alright,” Eames murmurs soothingly. He drapes himself over Arthur's back, pinning the squirming tail between their bodies, and starts to thrust.

The fever really hits Arthur then, with all the force of a wrecking ball: he can't form a single coherent thought, his nerve endings spark wherever Eames touches him. He mewls and sobs and begs for more and can't even feel how Eames is stretching him, can't feel the lube running down his thighs, can't feel how his arms are already aching, can't feel anything except how fucking full he is with Eames inside him. Eames pushes him down gently and he folds, curling himself around a pillow and clinging on. When Eames reaches his climax, the mere thought of him coming inside Arthur is enough to have Arthur spilling over the edge, too.

They don't tie: Eames starts moving in him again almost at once. It doesn't take long for them to fall into the same trap they did the last time: feeding off each other's energy, needing more, never getting enough. Eames growls, beyond words, just making feral sounds in his throat as he pounds into Arthur as hard as he can. They lose themselves in each other's bodies and it seems to Arthur that he's never felt so complete in his entire life.

It's good, it's perfect, but it's not very long before, gradually, Eames' thrusts lose their frantic edge. He starts to slow down a little. Arthur knows his energy can't be flagging yet, so he pushes against Eames impatiently, wanting _more, harder_.

“Wait,” Eames rasps, and before Arthur can see it coming, he pulls out and, in a few swift jerks, comes across Arthur's back. Arthur can feel where the burning streaks land. Furious at having been cheated—he's supposed to come _inside_ , doesn't Eames realize how important that part is—Arthur twists around to face him, glaring. Eames is kneeling there stiffly, still hard, catching his breath, one hand holding tight around his knot. It looks like it's taking him a monumental effort to sit still and not shove Arthur down, start fucking him again.

Arthur flops onto his back and stretches out, trying to look appealing. Eames' eyes flicker. He shuts them.

“You need to drink,” he says, sliding off the bed.

“No,” Arthur says, dismayed. Eames is walking away; how can he be walking away?

“Yes. I should have thought of that before. Here ...”

He disappears into the ensuite bathroom. Arthur hears the tap run for a long time. Eventually, Eames returns with a glass full of water, wiping his mouth off.

“ _No_ ,” Arthur says, pushing his hand away impatiently. He thought Eames understood, thought he realized how _vitally important_ their mating is. “I need—”

Then Eames runs his hand through Arthur's hair, and Arthur sways into his touch, helpless.

“Drink and we'll go again,” Eames says.

Grudgingly, Arthur takes the glass and raises it to his lips. The water is cool and good; startlingly so. He gulps it down feverishly.

“You weren't this bad last time,” Eames says, watching him. His eyes are still glazed. “You were able to stop.”

Arthur drains the glass and shoves it at him. “Fuck me now.”

“Wait.”

Again Eames leaves, and Arthur's tail lashes the bed with frustration. Then Eames is back with another glass.

“ _No_ ,” Arthur snarls, striking at his hand. Eames jerks back. “Fuck me _now_.”

“One more, pet. For me. Please.”

Arthur's hand shakes as he downs this glass. As soon as it's gone Eames is on the bed with him, wrapping Arthur up in his arms, murmuring in his ear how good he is. Arthur twists onto all fours, and sobs when Eames slides in—half because it feels so overwhelmingly _right_ and _good_ , half because it's starting to hurt. Eames murmurs soothing words in his ear, fucking him gently enough that Arthur quickly starts squirming and growling, clawing the bed. Eames huffs against his neck, and starts fucking him hard again, until Arthur is a mindless, blissed-out puddle in the sheets.

They fuck all day and half the night—Arthur sometimes taking brief, half-hour naps when Eames is tied with him. Every time Eames gets up and forces Arthur to stop for awhile or have some water, Arthur whines, snarls, sulks, tears at the bed. He can't understand how Eames doesn't see how urgent his need is. He goes mad when Eames isn't inside him; he wants to claw right out of his own skin, because the itching, burning desire is so powerful he doesn't think he can stand it. Last time it was he who needed to stop Eames: this time it's Eames who regains his cognitive functions more rapidly, especially as the night wears on, and soon, Arthur starts to smell anxiety on him.

“You're a mess,” Eames murmurs into his neck, nipping under his jaw and rocking into him after another short break. “You have no idea.”

Arthur's too breathless to speak anymore; his throat is raw from crying out. His body is at war with itself: he can't take anymore, it hurts and he's starting to cramp, but he can't stand to be parted from Eames. He hisses, squeezing his eyes shut tight as Eames wrings another orgasm out of him, then falls limp, gasping. Eames mouths his jaw, skates his lips over Arthur's, and starts to slow down. Arthur whines when he pulls out slowly.

“We need to stop now,” Eames says raggedly.

“No. Please.”

Arthur's cheeks are wet; when did that happen? Eames runs his thumb over Arthur's cheekbone, still caging him with his body.

“It's worse this time, isn't it?”

Arthur shuts his eyes again and lolls his head slowly in a nod, exhausted. So much worse.

“Take a break, kitten. Go to sleep.”

“No.” Arthur's voice cracks. He tries to struggle upright from his position on his back. Eames watches him, concerned. “Need you,” Arthur mumbles, reaching for him.

Eames catches his hand. “I think you've actually managed to wear me out this time, Arthur. You've wrung me dry.”

But the length of his cock is still covered in his own come, which is trickling thickly out of Arthur as they speak. It seems like the most important thing to taste him, suddenly. Arthur maneuvers himself awkwardly down the bed, pushing Eames over so he can take his cock into his mouth. Eames grunts, surprised and obviously oversensitive, but Arthur is careful, lapping up the length of the shaft to collect every drop. He doesn't swallow Eames down, just licks, not wanting to miss any of it. When he reaches the head, Eames tenses. Arthur laps over it a few times, collecting stray fluids, and when Eames' cock is clean, he finds himself still wanting more. He fastens his mouth over the head and suckles, trying to coax out any remaining drops.

“Arthur,” Eames bites out, letting his head fall back onto the pillow, and a few feeble spurts of come land on Arthur's tongue. Arthur sucks it down greedily.

Quicker than he can react, Eames grabs and flips him onto his belly. Arthur lands with a startled hiss. At once Eames is on his back, shoving in, and the base of his cock flares so wide that Arthur nearly screeches, not ready for it. But then Eames is in, and he realizes it's the knot, still expanding, stretching him, locking them together. Tears prick the corners of his eyes and he pants into the pillow harshly.

Once they're tied, Eames is very still on top of him. Then—slowly, gently—he wraps Arthur in his arms and rolls him over, causing Arthur to tumble down on top of him, so that he's lying on his back on Eames' chest. Arthur's own chest heaves, but Eames is still inside him, filling him, and that's enough to keep him quiet and quiescent. Eames' hand comes up to cradle his face, and he tilts Arthur's head back for a kiss. When he lets go, Arthur lets his head drop onto Eames' shoulder and closes his eyes, dizzy, panting for breath.

“That's it,” Eames murmurs, letting his hand roam Arthur's torso. Arthur bites his lip when Eames' hand wanders down to his belly—because he's sensitive, too—but the hand goes no further. Just starts rubbing in slow, rhythmic circles, fingernails scraping gently.

It takes Arthur a minute to realize he's purring. He also realizes, in a strange, out-of-body way, that he can't stop.

“Feels good,” he rasps hoarsely.

“You can sleep,” Eames says in his ear, still rubbing his belly. “Go to sleep.”

Arthur struggles to string enough words together to articulate his thoughts. “Don't want you to pull out.”

“I won't. I'll be right here, keeping you nice and full.” His other hand circles where they're joined, right above Arthur's tail. Arthur gives a full-body shiver.

“Promise,” he croaks out.

“I promise,” Eames says.

Arthur is lulled to sleep by the rhythmic rubbing of Eames' hand on his stomach, and the rise and fall of his breathing, up and down.

 

+

When Arthur wakes, light is streaming around the edges of the curtains, burning his sensitive eyes. He groans, moving sluggishly to shield his face when he realizes Eames is wrapped around him, still inside him, fast asleep.

With a snarl, Arthur twists around and shoves him off. As he does so, he becomes aware of the wetness inside him, trickling down onto his thigh. His knees almost buckle when he springs out of bed. He flees for the bathroom while Eames is still stirring groggily.

Blinking sleep out of his eyes, Eames appears at the side of the bathtub to observe Arthur, curled up under a jet of steaming hot water.

“Feeling better?”

Arthur ignores him, turning away so that Eames doesn't see the flush rising in his face. He pretends to be too busy soaping himself to notice Eames standing there.

“Hey.” Eames's voice, behind him, is gentle. “Don't be embarrassed.”

Arthur stops soaping. He's almost quivering with anger.

Eames reaches. “Let me help you.”

“No,” Arthur snaps.

Eames stops. He backs off and disappears, leaving Arthur to his shower.

Arthur stays in the shower until the water starts to run cold, until he's satisfied that he's washed all evidence of the previous day's filth off him. Then he just sits on the toilet, wrapped in a towel, and wrings his tail out for awhile. He's left little grey hairs around the drain; there are more on his hands after a few minutes. He always sheds when he's anxious.

Eames was right. This heat was worse. And it's not over. They've taken the edge off, but it's still there, warming him, vibrating just under his skin.

He vacates the bathroom, taking the hair-dryer with him so that Eames can shower while he begins the laborious process of drying his tail. Eames has stripped the bed, balled up all the sheets and tossed them in the corner. Arthur sits on the edge of the bare mattress, and his tail is just about dry by the time Eames is done, wandering out of the bathroom with a huge yawn.

“I'm knackered, Arthur. Can't believe you managed to wear me out.” He yawns again, pulling his clothes on stiffly. Then he notices Arthur's face. His expression softens. “Sore?”

“Yeah,” Arthur says through clenched teeth.

Eames moves closer, leans down when he sees that Arthur isn't going to snap at him again and kisses him on the forehead. “Do you need anything?”

“I don't know. Food,” Arthur amends.

“I can get food. You have a lazy day. Just stay in bed and take it easy, yeah?”

“I can't,” Arthur grits out. He stops the hair-dryer, smoothing his tail fur out. “It's not over yet.”

Eames sighs. “What do you want to do?”

“Not sex,” Arthur groans, passing a hand over his eyes. “Can we ... go outside? I need fresh air.”

Unexpectedly, Eames perks up. “Shall we go for a walk?” he says, and Arthur has to chuckle weakly—Eames is like a pet dog who's just heard the magic word. He nods, and Eames brightens even more. “I want to show you my home.”

“I've seen your home,” says Arthur. “I stayed there.”

“No,” Eames says, smiling. “Let me show you.”

Arthur dresses, not caring if his tail is still a little damp in his jeans, and they get in the car together. As Eames drives, Arthur rolls the passenger-side window and props his head against the frame, shutting his eyes. The wind blasts against his face, refreshingly cool. Eames stops outside a shop by the road to pick up food—biscuits, fresh rolls, cheese, crisps, juiceboxes, all the makings of a proper picnic—and then they're on their way again. Back toward Eames' parents' house. Arthur fidgets.

“Won't we ... attract attention, if we get too close to your family?”

Eames shakes his head. “It's just my parents that live up this way, there shouldn't be anyone else around unless someone's visiting. We're pretty spread out. It's mainly the full moon when everyone gets together here.”

Arthur reminds himself of their inferior sense of smell. His own nose is burning with all the scents of the countryside, and Eames beside him. It's terribly distracting. He can't wait for this heat to be over.

Eames parks the car on the side of the road before they get anywhere near the house. He takes the bag of food in one hand and Arthur's hand in the other and leads him away from the road.

They go slowly, for Arthur's benefit. That's the only mercy Eames shows him, though—he's so excited to show Arthur where he grew up, and Arthur stubbornly refuses the offer to carry him. He limps along after Eames as they trek uphill, too glad of the fresh air and the activity to complain.

“I used to run around these hills all day,” Eames tells him, still leading him by the hand. “Four-legged, of course.” He's not even out of breath and they've been walking for an hour.

“Uh-huh,” is all Arthur can puff out.

“Had all my secret spots where I could smoke a fag in peace. Alizé used to come along—”

He cuts himself off, pursing his lips.

“You guys were close?” Arthur asks, struggling up gamely alongside him.

“We were like brothers,” Eames says. “We grew up together, after all. He used to be different, believe it or not. I guess he changed around the time his dad left the pack—we were teenagers then.”

“And Faye?” Arthur asks. “Did you grow up with her?”

He can see the way Eames' expression closes off.

“Faye's not part of my family,” he says in a short, clipped way. “Her parents moved to the area from Japan. Human. Owned a restaurant, I think. Faye was bitten when she was nine years old.”

Arthur is surprised. As Eames has said, survivors of such attacks are rare. It seems strange that a little girl would manage to make it.

“Your pack adopted her?” he asks, struggling to keep pace with Eames, who seems to have momentarily forgotten he's there. “Is that how that works?”

“Generally,” says Eames. He slows down. “Her parents took her to a hospital and when there was nothing they could do, they no longer wanted the care of her. As far as I know, she hasn't seen them since.”

“What happened to the wolf who bit her?”

“Nothing,” says Eames tersely. “They never figured out who it was. Nobody came forward to take responsibility, so my parents took her in.”

“Do you know who did it?”

“It was Alizé,” says Eames.

They're silent for a few minutes. Arthur's too focused on keeping his footing to even realize they're at the top of the hill until Eames says, “Look.”

He turns and looks. The whole valley is spread out before them. There are other hills—or are they mountains?—rising dark blue on the horizon, and in between, a lush landscape of rolling moors. It looks like a patchwork quilt of shades of green, with a brown patch here and there, all of them divided by stone walls or rows of hedges or road. He can see their car, ant-sized from where they are, and other cars creeping along the road. He even recognizes Eames' parents' house, looking like a quaint little castle in the middle of the countryside. He recognizes the forest behind the house, and the stream he'd been able to hear from the guest room, flowing out all the way to the foot of the hill where he and Eames are standing.

“It's beautiful,” he tells Eames, turning to look at him. Eames is drinking it all in, and he looks so wistful that it makes Arthur's heart ache for him.

Then he turns away and says, “Come on.”

They wander down the other side, and Arthur takes to the downhill trek much more readily. He's starting to feel antsy again, itching in his clothes. Eames leads him to a strand of trees at the foot of the hill, right on the bank of the stream. There, they sit and eat. It's a long time before Arthur is full—he hasn't eaten since supper with Eames' parents, but fortunately Eames has brought plenty for them both.

“How are you feeling?” Eames asks, still picking at a bag of crisps. Arthur, lying on his belly in the sun with his eyes half closed, digesting, shakes his head irritably.

He's closed his eyes fully and put his head down on his arms when he feels Eames' hand running up and down his spine. He arches into the touch unconsciously, a movement that ripples all the way down to his tailtip.

“You smell good,” Eames rumbles. He takes his hand away. Arthur shivers, cold now even though he knows he's running a fever.

“Fuck me again,” he says hoarsely.

Eames peels him out of his clothes gently, laying apologetic kisses all over Arthur's body. He licks him open as if he can soothe the burn he'd left behind, and Arthur grips fistfuls of the soft grass beneath him to anchor himself to earth when Eames pushes in. It still hurts more than he anticipates. His vision blurs and he buries his head in the grass, not wanting Eames to see how much pain he's in, because he still needs this.

Eames needs it too, by the sound of it: he's quick and graceless, hungry for Arthur's skin, leaving bite marks to distract Arthur from the hurt where they're joined. He grunts softly on each thrust, growling _take it, take it_. Arthur rides it out at first, but by the end he's pushing tentatively back into Eames, gauging how much he can handle. It's easing from hurt into good again, quenching Arthur's need. It's so good.

He comes over the grass, not even aware he was hard until Eames strokes him with a spit-slicked hand, and then he just melts.

“Don't tie with me,” he thinks to say when Eames speeds up, growling again. Immediately Eames pulls out halfway and then he's coming, flooding Arthur with heat, clenching a hand around the base of his cock to stop the swelling of his knot.

He buries his nose in the side of Arthur's neck when he's caught his breath, inhaling deeply, and murmurs with a possessive squeeze of Arthur's hips, “You're mine.”

“I'm yours,” Arthur agrees in exhaustion, completely wrung out.

They slide apart gingerly. Arthur rolls over and starts pulling his clothes on, because the grass prickles his hypersensitive skin even though it's soft. Eames fastens his trousers and sits apart from him, closer to the stream, upwind of Arthur's scent.

“Why is it getting worse?” he punctures the silence, once Arthur has settled back down into a supine position.

Arthur sighs. He doesn't want to talk. He wants to spend the rest of the day dozing right here, in this comfortable patch of sunlight. No—the rest of the _week_.

“I don't know,” he says wearily. He opens one eye to look at Eames. “It's early again, too.”

“What are we going to do next time? Bloody hell, Arthur, another heat like that could kill you.”

“I think it has something to do with you,” says Arthur slowly. “It's not so predictable when you're around.”

“Should I leave, next time?” Eames asks uncertainly. “I'd have to be on the other side of the continent to keep myself away, but—”

“ _No_ ,” Arthur says, unable to handle that thought. “I need you. It goes by faster when I'm with you.”

“What if it gets worse?”

He can't handle that thought, either. So he just puts his head back down and closes his eyes, purposefully shutting Eames out. He hears Eames sigh.

He's not sure how long he's been napping, or if he's even fallen asleep at all, when Eames startles him with a sudden growl. He senses Eames move past him, and cracks open his eyes sluggishly. There's another figure striding toward them. When he lifts his face out of the grass, Arthur can smell him. Alizé.

He sits up and watches as Eames meets Alizé a short distance away, a barrier between the werewolf and Arthur.

“Going for a walk?”

“I followed his scent.” Alizé's tone is derisive. “Faye told me what happened in Alaska.”

“Nothing happened.”

“Exactly.” Arthur can see the way Alizé's eyes burn even from where he's sitting. “You would never have passed her up in the past. You didn't want her because you already have a mate.”

His gaze shifts to Arthur, momentarily distracted and suspicious.

“Why does he smell like that?”

“Go away, Alizé,” Eames growls. “Go away before I hurt you.”

Silence. Arthur realizes Alizé is just breathing in, tasting the scent of him. Eames growls and shoves him back a pace, hackling.

“Go back to the house.”

“Your parents deserve to know,” Alizé snaps, recovering. “I don't want to see you cast out, Eames—”

“You'd love to see me cast out, we both know you're the next in line—I'm talking!” Eames snarls, grabbing Alizé by the arm and yanking him back when he tries to slip past.

“Let me smell him,” Alizé says.

“You touch him and I will kill you, Alizé—”

“I don't want to touch your filthy pet,” Alizé spits at him. “I just want to smell him.”

From where he sits, Arthur can smell the anxiety and hostility in the air. He can sense, too, that dangerous, thrumming undercurrent of energy that had emanated from Eames back in the house in Toronto, carrying the scent of electricity and ozone. Arthur tenses warily, watching them both. His hand curls around a butter knife Eames had brought from the inn for their lunch.

“Go back to the house,” Eames says again, and Alizé sneers.

“If you think I'm going to take orders from you now—”

“And if you think I can't take your throat out just because I let you live in Alaska, you're wrong,” Eames seethes. The air is virtually crackling around him.

“Now you choose that unnatural creature over your own family?” Alizé demands. He breaks past Eames, who rounds on him with a snarl, frayed to his breaking point. “Let me smell him,” Alizé insists, and the air is dry and fraught with tension—something snaps as soon as Alizé is in between Arthur and Eames.

It's a blur of fur. The changes happen almost too rapidly for Arthur's eyes to follow—flashing jaws, billowing fur, and then Alizé is changing too, triggered by the threat, sprouting a chocolate-brown pelt and falling to all fours. And then the wolf that is Eames is shaking off the tatters of its clothes impatiently, its muzzle twitching. It swings its head around so that its gaze bores directly into Arthur, who is still sitting, mute, frozen, on the bank.

And it hits him how stupid he was for ever wanting this. Because he doesn't see Eames in there, he just doesn't.

The wolf's nostrils flare—scenting him—and icy fear starts to trickle through Arthur's veins. Then it turns, bulling Alizé out of its way, and curves its body so that it shields Arthur from sight.

The brown wolf—Alizé—is bigger than the Eames-wolf, but rangier. As a wolf Eames is stocky and compact, dense with fur and muscle. His coat is tawny, with rusty reddish ears and a grey-tipped mane. He's—beautiful, Arthur thinks dumbly, really; his features are unmistakeably lupine, but there's something vaguely feline about the form, his short and sturdy body putting Arthur weirdly in mind of a big cat. He's a wolf, but like something primordial and ancient.

For a second he and Alizé square off, eyeing one another. Their manes hackle between their shoulders. Arthur thinks back to his textbooks, one passage jumping out of his memory: _Serious injuries between werewolves are rare, as a fight is mostly composed of posturing ... The subordinate wolf knows when he is outmatched, and will submit before serious harm can be done to either combatant ..._

For a long moment this holds true: they're just posturing, growling at each other and showing their teeth, but not moving.

Then Alizé starts to duck forward. Immediately Eames is on him with a snarl, grasping him around the neck and fastening his teeth in Alizé's mane. He can't find a hold, though; Alizé shakes him off and lunges for his face, causing Eames to rear back onto his haunches momentarily before crashing back down on top of his cousin and sinking his teeth into Alizé's ear. Alizé bucks and twists and manages to flip them over, and they maul each other with their paws before they break apart. Eames, again, plants himself between Alizé and Arthur. They're only apart for a second before Alizé rushes him again.

The smell of werewolf blood starts to choke Arthur, sending danger signals to his brain. But he can't get up, can't get away, and he doesn't want to distract them anyway, in case they decide he's more interesting than the fight is. It's hard to tell who's winning at any given moment: they move so fast that all he can register is a flash of jaws or wet red fur, and the snarls and yelps he can't tell apart. He sees blood all down Eames' face and isn't sure if it's his own or not. Inch by inch, too, Alizé is gaining ground, forcing Eames back toward the stream.

They claw each other's faces with their paws and land blows that would shatter a human's bones. When they bite, they aim for each other's faces or necks. Their chests are soon bloody from taking the brunt of these failed attacks, but their manes, too, start to crust with blood, proving that some of these bites are finding their mark. Alizé manages to clamp his jaws around Eames' foreleg for a second and Arthur hears him scream; before he can recover, Alizé bowls him to the ground and tries to grab his throat, but Eames starts raking him viciously with his rear paws until Alizé has to leap away, growling, before Eames can eviscerate him. They barrel closer and closer to Arthur, who's not even sure the wolves remember he's there anymore, too caught up in their bloodlust.

He's snapped abruptly out of his reverie when he feels the rush of air caused by a swing from Eames' tail. Then he starts to scramble backwards, awkwardly. The fighting wolves spin around so that Alizé's back is to Arthur. In a split second, without even consciously thinking about it, Arthur stops retreating and instead lurches forward. He slams the butter knife point-first as hard as he can, deep into Alizé's flank.

Alizé screeches. It's all the opening Eames needs to pounce and get a good hold on the back of Alizé's neck. Alizé roars, bucks, tries to throw him off, but Eames locks his jaws and clings on. His long second canines shear through the thick fur of Alizé's mane and blood starts to run down the side of Alizé's neck in thick rivulets.

Snarling, Alizé drops to the ground and rolls, dragging Eames with him. Eames doesn't surrender his hold. Alizé shakes him, tries to twist out of his grip. The blood runs faster. When Alizé falls still, exhausted, Eames looses his teeth and attacks the side of Alizé's face. He lays open a wound so deep Arthur sees white bone before Alizé screams and twists away, half blinded by his own blood.

Eames just stands there, his muzzle stained with red, and Arthur doesn't understand until the chocolate brown wolf, spitting and crying with pain and fury, bends into a crouch and twists his head to show his throat.

He's submitting. Eames considers him.

Then he flies at Alizé, swinging a paw at his face. Alizé turns and runs. His tail isn't quite between his legs, but it may as well be. The butter knife is still embedded in his side. Arthur wonders if that will heal when he changes back.

Eames watches him go, his sides heaving for breath, and licks his lips. Sudden exhaustion settles over Arthur again, as if he'd been the one fighting. He puts his head down, dizzy, and closes his eyes.

He hears Eames' approach. Feels the brush of his cold wet nose as he sniffs at Arthur's neck. Arthur stops breathing and wonders if playing dead works with werewolves. The tip of a hot, flat tongue touches the pulse point in his neck; the same thing Eames had done the first time he smelled Arthur in heat.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck.

The massive wolf rumbles, perhaps approving of his prize. Arthur senses the wolf moving over him, positioning itself. Its clawed paws bracket either side of Arthur's shoulders. Then it leans down. Arthur feels hot breath on the back of his neck before its jaws start to close on his skin, to hold him in place.

He hisses, exploding from the ground and twisting around to confront the wolf, shocked at his own reaction.

“No,” he snaps.

The wolf, standing over him, looks startled, too. Only for a second. Then its lips pull back from its teeth, revealing the full length of the serrated canines that can slice through bones like butter. Its muzzle wrinkles and its ears lay back, and a growl bubbles out of its throat, long and rumbling.

Arthur considers lying still again, letting this happen, waiting for the wolf to realize how difficult penetrating Arthur will actually be, what with all these clothes and things in the way. Then it lunges lightning-quick; grabs at Arthur's collar and yanks hard, tearing the fabric a bit, as if to answer that question.

Arthur hisses again and strikes at him involuntarily. The wolf jerks it head back.

“You'll hurt me, Eames,” Arthur says steadily.

The wolf—Eames—stares at him, muzzle still wrinkled but teeth slowly being put away. It moves back, ears still flattened, but no longer caging Arthur's body. One ear swivels as if in sudden discomfort, and then Eames looks away. As Arthur watches, the wolf yawns deliberately.

Disgruntled, Arthur settles back down in the grass and closes his eyes. He hears the wolf pad away. When he cracks open an eye just to check where it is, he sees it marking a tree nearby. It wanders back over, settles a respectful distance away and starts licking its wounds with long, slow rasps of its tongue.

After five minutes of this steady rasping, Arthur opens his eyes again and turns his head to glare. “That sound is really annoying.”

The wolf stops. It gets up and moves closer to Arthur before it lies down again. There's no trace of a snarl anymore. It yawns again, uncertain, and then just watches Arthur. Waiting.

Not growling. Not trying to mount him again. Just lying there, looking vaguely worried.

In spite of himself, Arthur sits up and edges closer, curious. This is what he'd wanted, after all. To see Eames as he really is.

“Can I touch you?” he asks.

The wolf just gazes at him steadily, ears tilted forward. When Arthur reaches out tentatively and brushes the top of his head with his fingers, the wolf closes his eyes. Arthur explores him by touch: the soft, short hairs on the top of his head, the velvet of his reddish ears. The silver-tipped guard hairs of his mane, where not crusted in spikes with dried blood, are long and prickly at the tips but soft when Arthur buries his fingers under them. The thick undercoat completely covers his hand.

When his hand trails down to the shoulder, the wolf rolls onto his side, legs crooking out of the way so Arthur can see his belly. Arthur grunts.

“You're a big softie,” he says critically, pretending not to see the gashes that decorate Eames' flanks. The wolf's eyes close again as if in grave agreement.

Arthur withdraws his hand. He's too tired. He stretches out, curling onto his side. The grass rustles when the wolf rolls over. After a moment, his massive paw is on Arthur's shoulder. He paws gently, entreatingly, pulling Arthur closer to him. Grumbling, Arthur squirms until his back touches the warm bulk of wolf's flank and he can feel steady puffs of breath against the back of his neck. The wolf curves its entire body around him, tucking one hind leg between Arthur's.

He smells like Eames. Familiar and comforting.

They both sleep into nightfall, right there in the grass, side by side.

 

+

When Arthur wakes, shivering, Eames is stomping around in the dark, human-formed once more, trying to salvage his clothes. Different emotions churn the air around him. Arthur can smell fear and anger predominantly.

Eames picks up a piece of cloth and then shakes his head, snorting. Looking up, he notices that Arthur is awake. He doesn't say anything about whether he's still injured, or how close a call that had been, him changing in such close proximity to Arthur.

“He's going to tell the pack,” he says dully instead, after a pause.

Arthur doesn't know what to say, how to comfort him. Eames flings the scrap of cloth down with a bark of mirthless laughter.

“Fuck,” he says.

 

+

In the morning Eames finds that he can't bear to be near Arthur, not right now. So instead, he returns to the hills, where he sheds his clothes, changes his form, and runs and runs and runs. Until his muscles ache and his lungs burn and he has nowhere left to run to.

He retrieves his clothes and makes his way to the house.

He expects shame, shouting. He does not expect the tight embrace his mother folds him into.

“Is Arthur okay?” are the first words out of her mouth when she's stepped back, her hands still resting on his arms. Eames nods, and she smiles, squeezing him. “I told you he would be,” she says to her husband.

His expression is grave. “You took a terrible risk.”

“I know.” Eames' voice is barely a whisper. He can remember coming to the realization in his dim, feral mind that Arthur was something much more fragile than a she-wolf, something he couldn't hurt, and that truth had ingrained itself in him as deep as any inherent instinct. If he hadn't realized that in time...

That's the last they speak of that.

They take him to the parlour, where they can all sit. Eames' parents sit across from him. He feels like he's on trial. Maybe he is. He scrubs his hands over his face wearily.

“I'm sorry.”

“You could have told us,” his father says.

“I didn't want to ... disappoint you.”

His parents exchange one of their lingering glances that seem to contain an entire silent conversation. Eames' heart sinks, watching them. They are disappointed in him.

“You have options,” his father says finally, turning back to him. “Didn't you know that? You're an alpha, you—you can take concubines, if you need to.”

For a moment Eames thinks about that—taking a female who could bear him young, having Arthur _and_ the pack and his status in it—being a _father_ —

But the momentary rush of hope fades quickly.

“I can't,” he says flatly. “I told him I wouldn't share him. I don't expect him to share, either.”

“Damnit, son,” his father mutters, sighing. Eames' mother lays a gentle hand over her husband's arm, gazing steadily at him.

“Alizé is the only other grandchild of your father,” she says to him. “He doesn't have a mate yet. Thomas does. That makes him the alpha next in line. When Alizé has a child, he or she can take up the mantle.”

“But it's not that simple,” her husband argues.

“I don't see why not.”

“You're not stepping down any time soon anyway, are you?” Eames says, looking from one of them to the other. “I don't need to run the pack right now. Maybe I never will. I just want to know I still have a place here when I come home. Arthur too.”

His parents glance at each other again.

“We always accept mates who come from other packs,” his mother says softly.

“This is different.”

“It won't matter to them. He's Thomas' mate and Thomas is their blood. They'll accept him.”

“As long as Thomas isn't the leader of the pack—”

“We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Eames follows their conversation back and forth, growing hopeful. It's important to him that Arthur have a place in the pack, too. Arthur has no family; he's the only one of his kind that they know of, and Eames knows how alienated he feels around the humans he's always tried to blend in with. He wants Arthur to be accepted by his family. It's not the same thing, but—maybe it will help.

After one last, lingering glance, his father turns back to Eames.

“Bring your mate to meet the pack, Thomas,” he says. “Then we'll see.”

+  
+  
+

Arthur is not altogether too sure he's ready for this.

Eames' shoulder brushes his side. The full moon is blazing above them and the scent of many werewolves on the wind is making all of Arthur's instincts scream at him to run. Running would be a good idea, he thinks. Anything but descending into the valley where the pack is spread out.

They move closer, curious, when they see Eames loping down the hill to join them. Arthur sees a few tails start to wag, only to fall stone-still when they see Arthur behind him. Alizé lurks at the back of the group, his ears pinned, but doesn't make any move to approach.

“He wouldn't have hurt you,” Eames had told him after the fact, practically squirming in self-abasement. “It was my fault, he got my protective instincts all riled up. If he'd gotten close he would have smelled me all over you and stopped. I just couldn't let him get near you.”

“Faye shouldn't have told him,” Arthur snapped.

“She's bound to him,” Eames had said fairly. “If he asked, she couldn't lie.”

Faye isn't there, Arthur notes, testing the air. He can pick out Micah's scent, though, and Eames' parents. She must be gone, working some job so that she doesn't have to be near them. He pities her, sort of.

The wolves mill closer, curious, their eyes flashing green and gold. Eames stops in front of Arthur and fixes them all in a baleful stare. His body language can be read loud and clear: _This is my pack, and this is my mate. Problem?_

Arthur hardly breathes, curling his hands into clammy fists. The pack attacking them both is a very real possibility, though Eames said his parents could stop them from doing much damage—limit them to simply driving the pair off. Arthur hadn't been allowed to bring a gun. He wonders if the wolves can hear his pounding heartbeat. He sees more than one pair of ears laying back, like Alizé's; a hostile sign.

A she-wolf slips out of the crowd, a lithe white and grey form carrying the scent of Eames' mother. She pads right past Arthur to press her muzzle to the side of Eames' in greeting. A leaner copy of Eames, more grey than tawny, limps up to her shoulder and gazes steadily at Eames.

Arthur can practically see the tension dissolving from the werewolves' shoulders when they see that their leaders are unperturbed by their presence. When Eames' parents have slipped away, a large blond wolf greets Eames by grabbing his ear. Arthur is alarmed until he sees that it's just a playful gesture, Eames shouldering good-naturedly back against the blond who continues to mouth him. Tails start wagging again, and a few more of the pack come forward to sniff and nudge at Eames.

Arthur exhales slowly, thinking feebly, _What about me?_ Eames is too distracted to protect him quickly enough if it comes to that, and wolves are approaching Arthur, too, their eyes alight with curiosity. He swiftly runs through everything Eames told him: _Stand still. Don't make sudden movements. They're not afraid of humans, their first reaction will be fight over flight. Let them check you out. They might push you around a bit, that's normal. Most of all_ , he'd said gravely, _remember that no werewolf will ever attack you without giving you warning first._

He has to keep that last point in mind when they come close enough to sniff. He feels a couple damp noses snuffling over his hands, and has to force himself to keep stock-still. The knife strapped to his ankle feels very inadequate.

The Micah-scented wolf approaches with a she-wolf at its side, and shoulders him, a seemingly companionable gesture of acknowledgement. Arthur stumbles. Intrigued, even more wolves pad up to sniff at him. It's like being surrounded by circling sharks. Or hungry goats at a petting zoo, Arthur isn't sure. They all want to be close, to sniff and nudge him the way they are with Eames.

Eames returns eventually, and his packmates move respectfully away. Nobody seems concerned by Arthur's presence anymore. They've satisfied themselves. He's got alpha-scent all over him (and bruises to match); they're not going to challenge him. Arthur's passed their scrutiny. Somehow, he's in.

No longer interested, the wolves begin to disband and mill apart. A few pairs of mates slip away while the rest get back to whatever they were doing before, playing and socializing. Arthur lets go of his breath slowly, sways and sits down on the hill where he stands. Eames pads up to him and cocks his head quizzically, as if to say, _What are you doing down there?_

“Hey, big guy,” Arthur says warily, ready for anything.

He's not in danger, of course. Eames circles and lies down next to him, stretching out comfortably and surveying his packmates with a regal air. Arthur touches his shoulder.

“Go play with your family,” he says. “You missed them.”

Eames yawns in response, resting his muzzle on his folded paws. Arthur's hand on his shoulder doesn't seem to bother him, so he keeps it there and stops talking. They sit there for a long time, side by side, watching Eames' pack at play.


End file.
